Greatest greatest hits

But if you're asking, ChangesOneBowie.

My picks/some suggestions

The Baddest of George Thorogood and the Destroyers

Jimmy Buffett: Boats, Beaches, Bars & Ballads

John Barry: Moviola II (Ok maybe not a best of album as defined by this thread, but great nonetheless)

Come Dancing with the Kinks

Bob Marley Legend


Creedence Clearwater Revival Chronicles 1

Best of Bowie (2 disc that supercedes the excellent Changesbowie)

Duran Duran Decade

Jimi Hendrix The Ultimate Experience

Pet Shop Boys: Discography

The Best of Roxy Music

and Yes to Rolling Stones Hot Rocks (though I like Disk 2 as much as Disc 1)

You really need "Star Time" for the full James Brown experience, but "The CD of JB" is a pretty great shorthand survey of his hits over the years.

Oh good Christ yes.

Also, Queen's Greatest Hits Vol. I and II

ABBA: GOLD is pretty definitive. I'm completely serious.

Doesn't that one have shit like "Fame '90" and the cut of "Heroes" without the first verse? No thanks.

ABBA: Gold is fantastic. Of course, my wife is the only one who listens to it...

Ones that I think do a GREAT job of covering the necessary songs:
Black Sabbath: 'The Dio Years' - Covers almost all that you need.
Blue Oyster Cult: 'Workshop of the Telescopes' - If the live version is better, it's included instead of the studio version.
Dokken: 'The Best of Dokken' - Everything that you need.
ELO: 'Light Years: The very Best of Electric Light Orchestra'
Godsmack: 'Good Times, Bad Times...Ten Years of Godsmack'
INXS: 'Shine Like it Does' - 2 discs, featuring the Australian hits.
Iron Maiden: 'Best of the Beast' 2 disc version, which includes the live version of 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner'.
Joe Satriani: 'Anthology'
Nightwish: 'Highest Hopes: The Best of Nightwish'
Rainbow: 'The Very Best of Rainbow' - One of my most played CDs.
Ronnie James Dio: 'We Rock (Greatest Hits)'
Zebra: 'In Black and White: The Best of Zebra' - Underrated band.

I can't believe there is a Godsmack greatest hits album.

I'm not proud of it, but it does the job when I want something to bang my head to.

And there should be some sort of minimum lifespan/minimum number of actual hit singles you have to reach before you're allowed to put out a greatest hits album. And if you put out more than one, you'd better have a goddamn good reason for it -- the Police seem to have released the same fifteen songs about half a dozen times.

Wouldn't a Godsmack greatest hits album be the cd single of "Whatever" with "Snakebite" as a b-side?

The Smiths did a lot of that too.

I think Aerosmith wins the award for too many fucking greatest hits albums. Wikipedia sadly doesn't have them listed, but the count's gotta be over 10 by now.

RE: Godsmack - I pretty much bought it for 'Whatever', 'Bad Religion', 'Voodoo', and 'Greed'.

Do collections of singles count?

I'd put Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy up against any of the early complete Who albums (it may not surpass Sell Out or Tommy as a complete work, but it's incredibly satisfying as a collection of songs). I'd also put the Buzzcocks' Singles Going Steady above their first few albums.

Neil Young's Decade doesn't quite replace his 70s output, but it really highlights how eclectic it is. It's a different way to enjoy it.

Truth. I'm sure someone like Elvis or even Jimi Hendrix might eclipse Aerosmith in terms of total repackaging, but for an active band that (I'm assuming) still has the rights to its own catalogue their recycle rate is pretty high.

Aerosmith Greatest Hits Compilations:
'Greatest Hits' 1980 Columbia
'Big Ones' 1994 Geffen
'Young Lust: The Aerosmith Anthology' 2001 Geffen
'O, Yeah! Ultimate Aerosmith Hits' 2002 Columbia/Geffen
'Devil's Got a New Disguise - The Very Best of Aerosmith' 2006 Columbia

I'm not defending the band, but they had distinctive runs from both Columbia and Geffen. The varied GH packages were probably the results of rights issues.

The Beatles 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 are hard to beat.

I haven't heard either, but I have a hard time imagining that the 67-70 volume beats listening to the original albums.

As a kid, Eponymous was the first R.E.M. album I ever got. I wouldn't even call it a comprehensive collection of their stuff at I.R.S., let alone their whole catalog; but it's probably my most listened to album of all time.

The Best of Leonard Cohen is pretty perfect

I can appreciate when a band will include different mixes on a GH package (as with some songs on Eponymous) or live versions (like BOC).

But as a general rule I try to avoid them outside of older artists with large catalogues (like James Brown) where I know I may never get around to picking up all the original albums I want. I don't like the idea that I'm missing context and, potentially, good or even great "not hit" songs.

In my metal years I always treated good live albums as my "greatest hits" collections of choice. It has been years since I heard it but the Scorpions' World Wide Live had versions of older songs I vastly preferred over the studio recordings.

They really need to repackage this with the "review" of it that Townshend wrote for Rolling Stone.

It's probably been surpassed many times over, but Jimi Hendrix's "Smash Hits" was not only a great collection, but at the time it was released, the idea of tossing previously-unavailable-on-LP material on there ("Red House") was not common practice, and seemed pretty damn cool.

Another question might be, which Greatest Hits albums turned out to be better, or worse, than you'd have expected?

The remixes on Joy Division's "Permanent" seemed odd and ineffective to me, as did the ones on the first Blondie hits package; and considering each group only had a handful of albums to their name at that point, it hardly seemed worth the trouble. Garbage's recent "Absolute Garbage" comes with a bonus disk of remixes that mostly suck, but at least aren't taking the place of the originals. On his Capitol "Best Of," John Hiatt re-recorded three key songs (including "Have A Little Faith In Me") to no great benefit.

Especially pernicious are the packages re-recorded by 50's-60's artists like Roy Orbison or Sam and Dave, that often give you no indication at all that they're not the original recordings (though Orbison's new versions really aren't bad at all).

Instead of greatest hits albums, I tend to like a nice compilation of cover songs, whether it's one artist covering a bunch of people (Kicking Against the Pricks by Nick Cave, Nineteeneighties by Grant Lee Philips) or various artists covering one artist (Leonard Cohen - I'm Your Fan, Neil Young - The Bridge, etc.)

I don't mind when an album is called a 'Greatest Hits' compilation; that's based upon actual statistics (sales, radio airplay, etc).

I take issue when something is called a 'Best of' compilation, however. In many cases, the best material that an artist produces are those non-commercial deep cuts that never make it on the radio. Steely Dan, Rush, Dire Straits, Jane's Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead...if all that you've heard are the 'hits', you're really missing out.

That's the case with nearly all of the albums being mentioned. But it's a greatest hits discussion, so it's sort of a moot point.

On that topic, Judas, I like what Bjork did - just put all the songs to a vote online.

edit: this was with singles, and the vote determined not just what got in but the order

Shit man, I'd put that record above a lot of records. That's a great goddman record, start to finish. What Do I Get? and Orgasm Addict are worth the price of admission alone.

PiL's Greatest Hits -- So Far is a pretty good compilation.

Of course, who could forget that classic compilation, "The Very Best of the Human League." Misleading title, that.

Thanks for the advice Ray. I've been looking to explore the Stones, and that seems like a great place to start.

I'd agree with this, to an extent, but, I also think that The Who is one of the bands whose overall sound/aesthetic is least well served by its "greatest hits" albums. In high school, I did a lot of Greatest Hits collecting (as my parents had shitty taste in music, and hadn't exposed me to much great rock, so I had to do it on my own), and I never could understand how people could talk about Pete Townshend as a songwriter equaling (or even surpassing) Lennon/McCartney. It wasn't until I started picking up their full albums that I got it.

Well, actually, it's based on what the Marketing department feels like calling it. Though your logic is impeccable, and it would seem a pretty clear demarcation between the two, the actual distinction between "Greatest Hits" and "Best Of" is pretty meaningless in terms of how a label approaches repackaging. I've seen plenty that were called one, but turned out to be the other (or neither, for that matter).

Isn't the whole concept of releasing a "Greatest Hits" CD on death's door anyway in this iTunes era? We can all make our own Greatest Hits playlists now.

A lot of housewives and little girls up in here

If it had Only Living Boy In New York on it, Simon and Garfunkel's main greatest hits would be just about the best album ever.

I find greatest hits compilations to often be good introductions to bands, to give you a good taste before you decide if you want to invest in the whole discography. My first exposure (beyond individual songs on the radio) to The Beatles (at a very young age) and The Doors (at a somewhat older age) were via greatest hits collections, and they certainly encouraged me to dig deeper.

But there are still certain bands for which I own compilations that satisfy me just fine:

Classics, Volume 9 (Supertramp)
20th Century Masters - The Best of Three Dog Night (terrific collection)

nekkerbee: do yourself a favor and buy Supertramp's 'Breakfast in America' album. That whole album is a 'Best of'.

Hell to the yes. I will also add "Ramones Mania".

As for "Hot Rocks", I would love it if for no other reason than it gave us Weird Al's "Hot Rocks Polka".

I agree with this point when it comes to the absurd number of career-long "Best of the Who" compilations that try to cover everything from The Who Sing My Generation to It's Hard. But up until The Who Sell Out, the Who were an amazing singles band, and some of the great songs on Meaty, Beaty weren't even on the original versions of the albums ("I Can't Explain," "Pictures of Lily," "Magic Bus," "Substitute," and "I'm a Boy" - also, "The Seeker," which I'd call just an okay song). They've been added on subsequent pressings as bonus tracks, but they were hardly intended as part of the "full album" experience, like "5:15" or "Won't Get Fooled Again" were.

I was thinking the same thing. Growing up, when it comes to good music, I was pretty much "self taught". My parents listened to crap, and I had neither older siblings nor cousins close enough in age to lend me a hand in finding the good shit. This was back when the only way to acquire music was at an actual store or borrowing from someone. I used compilations as a gateway. If I liked what I heard, I then said "Hmm, this studio album has 4 songs I really like off of the compilation, so I'll start here." They served a purpose.

Because you people, you really know how to party.

I did the same thing, but unfortunately most live albums seem more like contractural filler than something special. Sure, some bands are great live, and do everything they can to get that magic recorded, but some live discs are awful.

Tom Petty's Greatest Hits is, as the kids say, all killer no filler (though the Anthology is better).

Bob Seger's Vol. 1 is pretty great until the two tacked on tracks at the end.

There isn't a bad song on the STYX: Greatest Hits CD. One of the only CDs I ever listen to these days.

Return of the Roughnecks: The Best of the Chameleons. Like the Beatles, every Chameleons record is worthwhile and nearly bereft of bad songs, but this is a good place to start nonetheless.

This is one of my pet peeves, when a couple of new tracks are pasted at the end of a greatest hits albums - as if to say these new tracks are instant classics, not just marketing ploys to sell the album.

I think this only works if you have a reasonable familiarity with an artist to begin with. Without that, you're just downloading random tracks, and that's bound to lead to some disappointment. To go back to an earlier example, imagine a home-assembled "Best of the Who" that, due to unfamiliarity with the artist, ends up heavy on Face Dances tracks? *shiver*

Yeah, one of the few exceptions is Tom Petty including "Mary Jane's Last Dance" on the Greatest Hits. It genuinely became a classic after the album was released.

A guy that lived down the hall from me at college only bought Greatest Hits CDs. The first (and I think only) time I ventured into his room I took a look at his collection (pretty much the first thing I did when I was in anyone's dorm) I couldn't wrap my drunken head around the sight. He had at least 100. It just looked weird. When I asked him about it, he reacted like I was the insane one.