Greatest hits

I hate greatest hits CDs!! I find it irritating when people get a best of CD then claim to be a fan of the band, they listen to an abbreviation of in some cases 30 year careers and think they know it all!! I think greatest hits be-little all the previous work by a band.

This year in the UK we've had best ofs from the stones, hendrix, aerosmith, U2, sabbath, iron maiden, clapton, led zep, come on!! ruin my other fave bands, ACDC, lynyrd and van halen.

I guess i feel it doesnt take much effort to buy CDs based on TV ads!!

Still Greatest Hits CD´s can be a passage for a new listner into a bands albums and other songs. Most people who really like a band soon forget a bit about those hit songs and listen more to other songs from orginal album.

They are OK but than bands like Aerosmith, Led Zep, Sabbath, Maiden, KISS... who seem to realese a new Greatest Hits album almost evry year are very boring and a sad thing for a fan to see. I mean wouldn´t it be better to record new fresh unjaded songs. But than again most of famous rock bands seem to be afraid of it.

Theyre great as an introduction. Alot of my favourite bands I got into by listening to Greatest Hits. I know a guy who bought a Bob Dylan Hits album for £1.99 now hes Dylans biggest fan.

I just hate how most, MOST, greatest hits cd's are just songs that were released as singles, but what about all the other songs. I would like a band to make a greatest hits cd, based on their favorite songs.

above (almost) everything, music is commercialism (is that a word), so of course people make albums with their greatest hits, because people will buy them much faster than normal albums if they`re not that big a fan. And beside who cares what other people listen to. Here in the Netherlands we had a band Within Temptation. I knew them for a long time already, they had 2 albums and about a year after the second album came out, the broke through in te music industry, and suddenly their videos came on tv and everybody loved them.
But I didn`t care about it. The music industry is just like that, don`t let it bother you.

Originally posted by Tele Master
I just hate how most, MOST, greatest hits cd's are just songs that were released as singles, but what about all the other songs. I would like a band to make a greatest hits cd, based on their favorite songs.

For the song to become a greatest hit, it has to be released as a single, but I know what you mean. I bought the Sublime greatest hits that came out a few months ago, and it only had 10 songs on it, and they were good songs but not the best choices.

Does Led Zeppelin have a greatest hits? If so, chances are Stairway would be on it, but it was never released as a single.

Led Zeppelin never released singles, which would obviously make for a boring Greatest Hits album...

They ahve a few Greatest Hits albums by the way

Yea it was.

I think if you replace "Greatest Hits" with "Top Sellers", you get a better sense of it. Fans of a band always have personal favourites that never got a lot of, (if any), airplay. These compilation albums are a chance to generate some high-profit sales without incurring the expense of recording and producing new material. It's a crass, commercial, ploy, but from a less-than-fervent fan's point of view, it can pull together enough of a band's recognisable songs to justify buying a disk that might not otherwise be in their collection. The Crass part of it is that, unless the band owns all of the rights to the music, the dollars from compilation sales go to the record company, not the band.

Maybe, but I have a Thin Lizzy Best Of CD, and its honestly one of the best albums I own, I listen to it all the time. I have other Lizzy albums but thats the one I always listen to more than any other...its called Wild One btw..