If you have access to a streaming service like Spotify, you can likely find collected playlists of Strait’s music (or that of any other artist you might be interested in). Take a listen, note which songs or albums are most appealing to you, and go from there.
I got Strait box set. It’s 4 cds of just his #1 hits.
I’ve started getting his albums. So far I got Ocean Front Property (2x plat) and Clear Blue Skies (3x plat). I choose them because they were multi platinum and had several hit singles.
So far, I’ve discovered very few filler tracks. I’ve liked all the tracks on these 2 albums.
That may change. Every song choice on all the albums won’t be great.
Old school thinking says to listen to their first popular album and see if you can listen to it straight through. If that one doesn’t hook you then you are most likely not going to be a fan.
But then the other school of thought is just listen to the hits as suggested by others. I’d at least give the first popular album a listen so you could get a taste of what appealed to people at the time.
I remember in High School getting very disappointed with bad album choices. I stupidly bought Sugarloaf and the only really good song is Green-Eyed Lady.
In College I bought Blondie’s album and hated it. Heart of Glass is the only thing I liked.
I quit buying studio albums (I bought greatest hits) for a long time. My faith in them were restored by Emmylou Harris. Nearly all the tracks are good. I have 9 of her albums. She did have a dry spell in the 80’s. Her 70’s, mid 90’s, and 00’s albums are very good.
Now, I’m going back and buying albums of the Stars I really like. Alan Jackson, George Strait, Brooks & Dunn. They all put out a lot of albums.
I am excited to hear new music. It is daunting.
For now, I’m looking at the hits on the album and whether it went platinum.
When I was first buying albums, in the 80s and 90s, I’d check written reviews in magazines and books like the Rolling Stone Record Guide and AllMusic Guide to see which of an artist’s albums were most highly regarded.
But sometimes I’d just get whatever happened to turn up in the record store, library, or department store dicount bin.
Nowadays I may do the online equiavlent of these. Which albums have the highest ratings on sites like Amazon, and what do the people who like them say about them? Which albums are free to listen to or cheap to buy?
Most artists with that large discography have a greatest hits album, so that’s the first thing I’d try. If not, I usually see what the most popular album is.
I got lucky sometime in 1987 or 88? and found the first 4 CCR albums in the cut out bin. New except the corner had been cut. They were clearing room for cds. I also bought several albums by Bread and The Dobbie Brothers. The cut out bin was my friend that year.
Thank goodness that today we know about the one hit wonders. I learned to avoid their albums.
I learned on Amazon that the new Carpenter greatest hits CD was changed by Richard. He remixed and even changed songs. The complaints in the Amazon reviews were heated. I hunted down a cd from the 80’s that hadn’t been remastered.
I start with the singer’s greatest hits (YouTube has a lot of compilations like this, if you’re cheap like me), or ask fans I know what they’d recommend I start with. If I really love the singer after that, I just go from there and try to find all his or her other stuff.
It sounds like the OP already has a starting point, but another approach that I just thought of would be to google the term “Essential [artist name]” – particularly for well-known artists with large bodies of work, there tend to be a lot of websites with recommendations for their key songs. Take a look at some of those, and see which songs tend to have a consensus around them.
For example, for “essential George Strait,” I found the following lists (among others):
Personally, I would agree with doing a bit of research and look for “essential.” What do folks who are already fans tend to like most?
I’m not big on “best of” or “greatest hits” collections because in the case of my own favorite artists, the selections on compilations like that are, for the most part, not the tracks I’d choose. So in general, I don’t trust them as representations of what would most impress me. But that’s just One Man’s Opinion™.
I ran into this with Prince – so much material and so much variation, how to begin! I finally ‘chose’ by picking up DVDs at secondhand stores and when I liked all of those started filling in the spaces.
Thank you. I’ll take a look at Road Less Traveled.
I’m slow acquiring albums. I have to listen to a album daily for a couple weeks. Really get the songs in my head. Once in awhile I’ll remove a song from my playlist that I don’t like. That’s only after hearing it repeatedly and still not liking it.
This is what I was going to recommend. Allmusic.com is a great treasure trove of info about (the whole of) recorded music. It has been my main starting point since I stopped reading dead tree music magazines. If I discover a new (for me) artist, I go to allmusic and check out their discography, the reviews and the recommendations. Of course then I go to Deezer, my streaming service, and check it out and compare. If you still buy your music like the OP, of course it’s more of a risk. I surely remember, I also was a record buying machine for most of my life. It has become so easy now, but somehow I miss the old days of hunting for records in stores, sigh…
This is my standard method when I hear something by an artist that I have never heard of. Many of them have reviews that discuss how the album fits in the artist’s body of work. Every album on the discography Chad_Sudan has linked to has the little icon next to its name.
