Strange omissions, considering Body Language made the top 5 in Canada and almost made the US top 10. Tie Your Mother down also had some chart action. And Keep Yourself Alive is considered very much a classic of FM AOR.
I would consider the inclusion of "Back Chat", "Calling All Girls", "Pain Is So Close To Pleasure", "Scandal", or "A Winter’s Tale" on a hits collection to be even more strange.
Strangely, Body Language did quite well on the US and Canadian charts. Higher on the charts than tracks like Don't Stop Me Now, which seem to have more traction these days.
For many years Americans had only the 1987 issue of Vitol Idol as a Billy Idol compilation, which misses some hits up to that point. While the UK had both Vitol Idol and the more complete Idol Songs, which was a little unusual considering Idol had a couple of his singles charting higher in the US and his album sales were stronger here.
MGM left "Hair" off of "The Best of the Cowsills". It was ultimately their biggest hit, so they tagged it onto "The Cowsills in Concert".
On Bon Jovi's Cross Road comp, Born To Be My Baby was not included even though it was a bigger hit than some of the others that were.
More so than the Wyclef Jean collab, the Elton version of Show Must Go On, the 1999 remix of Under Pressure or the solo singles?
No Synchronicity II is bad enough. Using a softer re-made version of Don't Stand So Close To Me is very not cool.
Hardly a Smash Hit then, although I did just delete my post because Smash Hits did have tracks on it that weren't released as singles, so either the title is a misnomer, or it is a "Best Of" rather than Greatest Hit package.
The Hot Space album is a bit of an outlier with those compilations. Under Pressure got picked for GHII, but that’s not really a Hot Space track. I guess the fact that the album appeared right after the first Greatest Hits album made it easier for the band to dismiss it.
I tend to agree... although I have a soft spot for "Havana Moon"... Chuck is breaking out of the mold a bit on it..
My absolute two favorite Steely Dan tracks... I don't understand the omission of Take It Away on Pure McCartney either... it was top 10 stateside...
Like I’ve said before, these could have substituted many selections on GHIII. Besides that, there’s roughly 22 minutes of unused space on the most common cd version of GHI. Any of these would make sense, imo.
Bennie and the Jets is five minutes of pure boredom to a lot of people over here. That style of Soul music was more popular in the USA than UK/Ireland. Barely top 40 over here and the UK.
The Guided By Voices best-of Human Amusements At Hourly Rates, compiled by Uncle Bob himself, inexplicably omits "Gold Star For Robot Boy", of all things. It could easily fit, there's about three minutes to spare. That said, bar "Hit", which is 30 seconds long and amusing to find on a hits disc, the track list is fairly inarguable otherwise. (Edited because I accidentally called it a "hits disc" - Pollard is of course well-known for his no-hitters)