The most annoying "Best of", "Greatest Hits" Compilations (key hits missing, live tracks, etc.)*

C Moon was part of a double A side with Hi Hi Hi in Britain.

Personally, I don't lament the absence of LTWTMS, as I've never liked it much.

 

Not my favorite either, but it is weird that one of Wings' best sellers ever and a #1 didn't make the cut for a Wings Greatest Hits collection.

 

You could argue but the logical counter-argument would be that MIA is not a Wings track and did, in fact, predate the formation of the band.

 

'Classic Yes' from 1981 annoyingly features live versions of I've Seen All Good People and Roundabout, neither of which are anywhere near as good as the studio versions.

This was very much a 'valedictory' compilation for a band that had just, apparently, folded. Atlantic had rights and access to all of the band's catalogue, so I think the inclusion of the two live tracks was a mistaken gesture to give Yes fans 'something new' as an inducement to buy. I bought it as a Yes newbie and was very annoyed when I heard how much better the studio originals were.

 

aren't those 2 songs tacked on at the end as bonus tracks?

 

Yeah, it was actually a separate 45RPM that came in the original vinyl jacket, which would have been cool if the studio versions had also been on the LP.

This must be somewhere earlier in this thread but I always thought it was a bit of a head-scratcher when Peter Gabriel came out with the compilation Shaking The Tree in 1990, leaving out "In Your Eyes", arguably his best known song at the time.

 

Don't know about the vinyl version. I only know the CD. They aren't listed as bonus tracks on that.

Just checked: Chris Squire himself compiled it.

 

looks like the cd version tacked them on as they were a bonus 45 with the original LP version

 

Yep: just researched it. But what kind of Yes compilation omits two of their best-known songs?

 

agreed

 

So were "Another Day" and "Uncle Albert" and they're on "Wings Greatest" - point, counterpoint!

Also, "Maybe I'm Amazed" was a hit in its live version by Wings...

 

True!

 

Paul McCartney - All The Best (1985) - Missing "Maybe I'm Amazed" & "Take It Away"
Neil Diamond - 12 Greatest Hits (1974) - original release included live tracks over studio versions
Bob Seger - Greatest Hits (1994) - Missing "Fire Lake" and "Shame On The Moon"
Bee Gees - Timeless (2017) - Missing "Run To Me" and "One"
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Chronicle (1976) - Missing "Midnight Special". It wasn't a single, but still would have liked it on there.

 

BS GH-Missing Shakedown, his only #1 as well as those two Top 5 hits

CCR Chronicle-Born on the Bayou was the big missing one there.

 

Neil’s comps were always a huge mess because he ended up on four labels, Bang, Uni, MCA & Columbia. I hate all his early comps where the labels would pull that and not mention it on the cover.

 

Most hits collections are either missing key songs or have poor mastering.

 

I dunno about that. Best 1 was my friends' and my introduction to them, and we became firm fans for years afterwards. Don't you think if you put Best 1 and Best 2 together (thinking of it as a double album, if you will) that it's a pretty fine introduction? Yeah, the order of the tracks is random, but a lot of 'Best Ofs' are like that.


No doubt it's been mentioned already, but U2's Best of 1990-2000 has to take the prize. Hoo-boy, where do I start...?

-- 'Gone', 'Discothèque', 'Staring At The Sun', and 'Numb' are in new-mix versions, all of which suck compared to the originals
-- includes 'Miss Sarajevo', which was released not by U2 but by Passengers (and is mostly Pavarotti singing...)
-- includes two songs that are from well-after the year 2000, rendering the disc's title false
-- pointless inclusion of 'The First Time' -- a decent song but hardly one any U2 fan would want on a 'best of' -- and omits 'Zooropa', from the same LP, one of their best-loved tracks from the 90s
-- omits 'Please', which is the single best song (and a single) that they issued between 1994 and 2000.

 

Any Led zeppelin or Pink floyd "Greatest hits" is pointless

 

From everything I've read 'C Moon' was the B-Side until the BBC banned 'Hi Hi Hi' so it was either flip the single as far as promotion goes - making C Moon the A-side by default, or just let the single die, or withdraw/delete it. So if that's true then it wasn't really a double A-Side - it was a "flipped" single where the A&B sides were swapped/flipped out of necessity.

Anyway it would be a bit much to include both sides of almost any single, considering how many genuine hit singles never got even one of their sides included, not to mention that the album had a track list seemingly designed with both the US and UK in mind, so there was no possible way to do that and be comprehensive. It would have either needed to be a double album, or have separate track lists for each country.

LTWTMS is a bigger omission than 'Mull Of Kintyre' would have been if it were left off, since Mull Of Kintyre (though a UK #1) was a total non-entity in the US being the B-Side there (Girl's School made US #33 as the American A-Side). OTOH LTWTMS was a US #1 and also a UK #6 so it really needed to be there on a hits package that intended to serve both the US and UK.

 

'All The Best' was 1987, and it was only missing 'Maybe I'm Amazed' if you bought the US version, or you bought the international CD version. The international vinyl and cassette had it - but not the proper hit single version.

Take It Away probably deserved to be there as it was a US #10 hit, but since they felt the need to duplicate over half of the contents of Wings Greatest, instead of making it a proper sequel/companion volume, lots of deserving hits needed to be left off - again.

 

Hi Hi HI/C Moon is listed as a double A-side in the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles.

The omission of LTWTMS is strange indeed and unexplained. This begs the question: who selected the tracks? When the artist does the selection we're usually told but most artists had/have zero interest in GH packages. Junior's Farm is on there, which was US top ten but a relative failure in Britain.

 

As it was, 'Classic Yes' was a large chunk of the "Fragile" album, a large chunk of the "Yes Album" and one song each from CTTE and GFTO. What else could they have done other than make it a double album - or I suppose they could have left off the one song each from CTTE and GFTO to make room for the studio versions of those two live songs, making 'Classic Yes' a full one half 'Fragile' and one half 'The Yes Album'.

 

It was a 33 1/3 rpm single here.

 

Yes - the vinyl era did not suit compilations from progressive rock bands, which is why there weren't that many back in the day. In some ways, Classic Yes did the trick for me, because it made me want to explore further.

 

That's got nothing on Time Waits For No One 1979, Sucking In The 70's 1981 & even Jumpback 1993 a true greatest hits comp spanning many years.