In the 50s, 60s & 70s it was not uncommon for some fairly big hits to never make it onto a hits collection. RCA never did put Charley Pride’s “It’s Gonna Take A Little Bit Longer” (a 3 week #1) and they issued 3 ‘Best Of’ and 2 ‘Greatest Hits’ collections (with almost no overlap) on Pride. MCA never issued a hits collection on Cal Smith, and Capitol’s two Hank Thompson hit collections contained only about half of his charted Capitol hits. The 1967 release by Columbia’s of Johnny Cash’s Greatest Hits barely skimmed his output up ’til that time. The 1968 Ernest Tubbs Greatest Hits had maybe 15% of his hits on it as did the Webb Pierce’s Greatest Hits (and both were full of remakes). In the 1970s the some labels cynically started issuing “Encore” or “Biggest Hits” albums which hugely overlapped the already issued hits collections with a few different songs to entice the buyer

I think if you are not a diehard fan of an artist, Greatest Hits collections are a good way to go. While I may have an occasional album (mostly early career albums) by the likes of Faith Hill, Martina McBride, Phil Vassar, Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney, mostly their representation in my collection is in the form of Greatest Hits collections Chesney

first of all: congratulations ! your review on toby keith’ 35 biggest hits has been noticed in the new and in the old world – even in times of the www. that’s not nothing.

i think it’s great, when someone is so passionate about something that the person gets carried away by it. still, reviewing compilations is like walking, when there’s a ride available – not the obivious choice and a moderate waste of time and effort, in my eyes.

taking up your point that gh-samplers are not useless in order to get some idea about an artist’s work, why not trying to dig a little deeper, when reviewing the past again, triggers so much passion in you.

for example: i believe dierks bentley is releasing a gh collection soon/now (the picture-perfect output path: 3 studios give enough hits to make the fourth release a gh). a review of that sampler album resulting in your conclusion, whether this artist’s output can easily be covered by buying the sampler or perhaps his impact on today’s country is so significant that it’s worth to spent something more by chosing the slightly more expensive way of buying all his studio albums, would be much appreciated, at least by me, since i’m currently dealing with this very question.

i feel, it’s the different approaches and views that make reviews the more or less fascinating reading that they are. a new tool, even if it comes from the methodical section of the tool-box should not be mistaken for being a passion killer – it’s just another angle to look at the same thing.

your passionate writing attracted already readership around at least half the globe – keep on going, next stop asia.

there are actually two reasons why i brought this argument up:

1. i realised that there are quite a few reviews of “greatest hits” compilations, when reading through your “album reviews” section but it turned out that these reviews were at best “semi-helpful”.

2. they were only “semi-helpful” because when it comes to big hitters like george strait, alabama, willie nelson, george jones, dolly, reba etc. there is an amazing amount of compilations issued over the years and an objective guiding-line would be quite a helpful tool to make the best possible pick. why not creating one if you think reviewing compilations adds value to the section.

regarding your examples, which i liked and provided some food for thought, you are right and wrong. as long as generally accepted charts exist do not argue with them, but no doubt, there’s more than just airplay that determines the quality and impact of a piece of music, which again, makes some of your other lists such pleasant reading. however, a number one hit, even if it’s only for one week is by definition bigger/greater than anything that did not make it to the top-spot (see shania, dixie chicks). vince gill’s “go rest…..” is without any doubt an essential song of his catalogue, but sadly, was not such a big chart success. it would be top listed for an “essential hits” sampler but when it comes to “biggest” or “greatest” hits it might even not make it onto the record.

when it comes to toby keith, whose music i really like and have collected from the first release, let me just point out that on this side of the atlantic, he did not receive the same reaction as at home, when this song came out. but since this would lead into politics, leave me off the hook by saying that at the end of the day, it was a #1 song like the others, therefore, surely a must on any toby keith compilation be it “biggest/greatest” or “essential”.

final question: have you ever heard an artist or a label manager say: “i’d love to have a #1 song for 3 weeks”?

To make a couple of other points though, I think there is a validity in reviewing greatest hits as though they are another album for an artist. I have a zillion CDs, but I do not buy each album of every artist. So, greatest hits packages are an important part of my music collection. Often times, I will buy a GH collection to see if I would be interested in buying more from the particular artist’s discography and there are many bad greatest hits out there. So, ultimately, I would not have written this extensive of a review if it had been one of those BMG collections. But since this collection is more substantive than the average collection, I feel it deserves a more thorough review.

Finally, while your equation for rating a GH collection is quite methodical, it lacks the passion that drives me to write reviews in the first place.

The problem with that approach is the country chart is airplay only, so whether or not a song is a “greatest hit” would be solely defined by the weeks it received the most airplay in relation to the other songs on the chart, not the actual popularity of the song with fans.

Was “Honey I’m Home” a bigger Shania Twain hit than “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” because it went to #1, while Man! stopped at #4?

Was “Cold Day in July” a bigger Dixie Chicks hit than “Goodbye Earl” because it went top ten and “Earl” didn’t?

The only single out of six from Vince Gill’s “When Love Finds You” that wasn’t a top ten hit was “Go Rest High On That Mountain”, but it won CMA Song of the Year and is now one of his signature songs.

Even using Toby Keith, his most popular song is probably “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue”, the one that made him a superstar. But it only spent a week at #1, compared to multi-week #1 hits like “I Wanna Talk About Me” and “My List”, which aren’t quite signature songs for him.

So in short, I don’ t think that formula would work.

the verdict on the material is already known for quite some time: it’s the commercially most successful output during a certain period of time -full stop.

instead of commenting again, what has been judged long before, why not considering a valuation system based on numbers? simply, add together the peak-positions of each hit and divide it by the total number of hit-songs on the record. this average gives you immediately an idication what we are looking at. the sampler with the lowest average must be the best value for money. bonus tracks count for nothing because they are only teasers/fillers. should they turn out to be of some quality they might be found on the following “greatest hits” album anyway.

by using a number-based evaluation one could also see immediately who’s been a major hit-maker (low average) and whose greatest hits were not such great chart-busters after all (high average). as a benchmark i would suggest a basket consisting of averages of a dozen chart-topping artists (male and female) of the last 50 years.

Paul, good point about the uncut songs on the package. I wonder why they included the single version of “Who’s That Man” while seeming to include the album versions of the other songs.