Ahead of Thursday’s gig, I decided to chuck some Manic Street Preachers tunes on my iPod. Not unreasonably, I thought, I selected the two most recent albums and their 2002 greatest hits compilation Forever Delayed.
However you look at it, that album serves the Manics first decade or so poorly. Design for Life and Motorcycle Emptiness are present and correct, and it’s good they found time to squeeze Motown Junk in, but the new songs (There by the Grace of God and Door to the River) hardly stand up to the other songs included or those they missed off.
This set me thinking about how well bands are served by hits compilations and whether this bears any relation to the quality of the band. I realise that it cannot be easy for one set of songs to serve as an introduction to casual fans and as a distillation of an obsessive’s favourite 20 songs. I know that greatest hits sets need to include previously unreleased material to entice long-term fans to buy them. And I am aware that such albums are often issued as the last album in a contract or during a creative lull.
But I’m not sure that any of that explains why some greatest hits can be perfect summaries for an obsessive fan and introductions for others at the same time. The Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ Greatest Hits does that, Bruce Springsteen’s Essential Collection arguably does, and the red and blue albums by The Beatles certainly do. We can haggle over one track’s inclusion over another, but these broadly do the job expected of them.
Even collections with new material can include songs strong enough to stand up alongside older songs. Bon Jovi’s 1994 collection Cross Road included Always and Someday I’ll be Saturday Night, both of which have stood the 16-year test of time well enough to be included on the bands new Greatest Hits collection, due out next week.
So what are the best greatest hits collections? Not in terms of the relative quality of the songs of one band versus another, but in terms of how well they distil and fairly represent a band’s output.
For me, it’s Pearl Jam’s Rearviewmirror, nudging ahead of Cross Road. Rearviewmirror basically contains all the songs that I would put together to introduce anyone to Pearl Jam. In fact, I think my selection would match up almost completely with that of whoever chose the songs for Rearviewmirror.
But maybe that’s just me. Maybe Rearviewmirror just passes a very personal test in a way that Forever Delayed might for someone else.
Anyway, here's Alan Partridge, his new stereo and his favourite Beatles album.
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