Music Sound

Greatest hits

A greatest hits album (also sometimes referred to as a "best of" album) is an album of successful, previously released songs by a particular music artist or band. To increase the appeal of the album – especially to people who already own the albums – it is common to include remixes of popular songs or new material, with new songs often being released (and themselves sometimes becoming successful).

Greatest-hits albums are typically produced after an artist has had enough successful songs to fill out an album release. They are aimed at fans who liked a few of their singles, but not enough to buy an artist's entire catalog and new fans who want to sample the most famous work of an artist with one purchase.

Similar to a "Greatest Hits" album is a "Best of", of which some or all songs needn't be hits, and can simply be songs from past albums liked by fans and music critics. Bands that have loyal following but too few chart hits to fill a greatest hits album (or none at all) often release a "Best of" album instead since "Best of" album songs need not have charted. An example of this is John Prine's Prime Prine: The Best of John Prine. Occasionally, artists have both a Best of and a Greatest hits album with the Greatest hits album limited to songs that made the single's chart while a Best of album is more oriented towards fan favorites and album tracks. For examples, The Beatles 1967-1970 is a best of album (largely consisting of album tracks), whereas The Beatles 1 is a greatest hits album (based exclusively on chart positions). Other terms for best-of albums include "Classic" (Example: Classic Queen) and "Gold" (Example: Glen Miller: Pure Gold}.

Similar to a Best of album is a definitive collection, which attempts to include every song by the artist or band that fans and music critics consider as worthy examples of their work. An anthology collection is similar to a definitive collection but usually applies to box sets of artist's or bands with a large body of work compiled over many years.

Johnny Mathis's Johnny's Greatest Hits (1958) is generally considered the first greatest-hits album. It sold well, remaining on the Billboard Top Albums Chart for a then record-breaking 490 continuous weeks.

In 2005, some greatest hits albums became ridiculed because many young "pre-mature" artists are releasing them. The likes of Hilary Duff, N Sync and Mandy Moore released greatest hits albums though they might have had only a handful of hit singles in their short careers. [1]. This is not, however, a new phenomenon: Kenny Rogers and The First Edition, for example, issued their Greatest Hits album in 1971 - three years after their first top 40 pop hit. Former Beatle Ringo Starr issued his greatest hits album, Blast From Your Past, after a mere three solo albums in the 1970s, while pop star Jason Donovan had a hits album out in 1991, only two years after he debuted.

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Music Sound, v. 2.0, by MultiMedia

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.