In lieu of a regular review tonight, I’m going to have a short diatribe about compilation and greatest hits albums. First, I’ll be covering compilation albums.
Ahhh yes, compilation albums of genres… Everyone has seen those commercials during midday or late night tv for albums full of hair bands like Damn Yankees, Whitesnake, and Ratt. Now, while I like a song or two from these bands, that doesn’t make them necessarily good. Then there’s the ones like Now! from the 90’s (and apparently they still come out with new ones, to my amazement), which compile shitty tracks from ‘artists’ for teeny boppers. God those things suck (boppers and Now… this pronoun is all inclusive). And through research I’ve just done… Now! started in 1983. The fact that that level of fail has been able to continue for this long is astounding. No, wait, it isn’t. Metallica is still around. Fucking Metallica… Through further research, I’ve discovered that it started in the UK in 1983 (probably with some decent tunes), and the one here in the US that started in 1998 was a spin-off. This is what happens when I just read previews of Wikipedia articles, rather than some small amount of content. Anyway, the worst of all of these compilation albums of genres is none other than Kidz Bop. If you’ve never heard of this abomination, consider yourself lucky. This shit takes popular music, and instead of it being sung by people who have some amount of musical ability (I’m making a huge leap here, Evel Knieval style), it is sung by a chorus of children. KIDS SINGING DOES NOT SOUND GOOD! IT SOUNDS LIKE FUCKING SHIT! I don’t care that your kid was in choir for church and in school from first through fifth grade, your kid can’t sing. I never thought it was possible to make Ricky Martin music sound worse, but Kidz Bop found a way to fucking do it. And also, they ruin songs that are actually good! For example, they covered Smash Mouthand Barenaked Ladies. And just to send my co-reviewer into a murderous frenzy… they did a Kidz Bop Sings the Beatles album. I can’t say enough to say how wrong that is, so I’ll just stop here.
Now, greatest hits albums: These are made to serve a few purposes. First, is to get more money by re-releasing songs that people already bought, but in a more convenient fashion on one disc. Secondly, they allow people who may not know of a band to access their most popular songs. This is wrong; they allow people to claim to be fans, when they actually don’t know much about the whole catalog of a band. This is really a pet peeve of mine. People will claim to be a huge fan of a band, and only know a handful of their songs. Then there’s another issue with greatest hits albums: sometimes, a band will put out an album so amazing that it essentially already is a greatest hits album. This is the case with Boston by Boston. Seriously, all 8 tracks on that album are awesome. Try to argue with me, too bad you fucking can’t, I win. Then, there’s bands with catalogs so extensive, that they cannot be boiled down to one album. To recant a band I mentioned earlier, the Beatles. Seriously, they can’t be put onto one album. Just doesn’t work.
So there you have my rant on these abominations that get pressed to CD’s. Hopefully, this will inspire you to never buy one again, and find some creative way to destroy those you already do own. Oh yeah, fuck Dragonforce.
This is Stereo Control 