Which exec believes we want this junk? (Compilation rant)

Huey Lewis And The News* - Collected

Checking this Huey Lewis & The News compilation and I had to laugh at the tracklist and versions of songs included in this release. Who thinks this stuff will help sell it?

• *10* (that's right, 10!) single edits!

• - 1/3 of the compilation (1 whole CD) not featuring the band ; just Huey with previous bands or duets with current performers, including a gospel song!?

• 6 dance remixes! So you don't get the album versions and they're replaced with pointless remixes.

Here's a great example of the remixes included in here.



Sure, castrate the song immediately by removing that driving intro. Couldn't make it through the first 90 secs. Who will ever tell themselves "You know, I'd like to listen to Power Of Love but not that crappy original. I need that awesome Jellybean remix!"????

 

Yeah, that compilation seems to be conceptually challenged. Huey Lewis & The News is not really a band that screams "I NEED A TEN MINUTE DANCE REMIX OF ALL THEIR HITS!!!"

However, I have to admit that I like that Power Of Love remix because I recorded it off the radio back in '85 and played it over and over again (I didn't have the BBTF soundtrack, so that was the only version I had of the song).

 

I'll defend single edits - I'm a bit of an obsessive and sometimes tracking down single edits can be really difficult, especially when they were only on promo 7" discs. But outsourced remixes I can definitely do without. I would guess this compilation is targeted toward obsessive collectors, though I really struggle to think of what an obsessive Huey Lewis collector would look like besides the psycho from that movie. At which point this CD starts to look pretty ominous.

 

I’m by no means a Huey Lewis fan/aficionado, but I don’t really see anything wrong with this release. In fact, it actually seems on paper to be fitting for both hardcore and casual fans.

The single edits are likely less common on CD than album versions, and the remixes (which appear to be either single mixes or are in fact also included in their original renditions, including Power of Love) are also possibly rare. The single versions are the versions with which radio listeners are familiar.

So what’s the problem?

 

The idea behind a compilation is not needing to buy every album to get the songs you want. When most/all of the hits are replaced with single edits, live versions, or dance remixes (who the hell wants a dance remix of a Huey Lewis song? LOL!), the compilation doesn't serve its purpose.

In such a case, one has to buy all of the albums and manually compile the songs. Then, there's level-matching and mastering decisions from album to album which cause other issues if one were to listen to the whole homemade compilation.

If the execs really wanted to provide an extra CD of material, they could've simply provided the album versions of the hits as well. That way, you get to choose between the uncut and radio versions of each song. No such option was given on this compilation. It's either shorter versions or much longer cheesy dance remixes... or, you know, listen to Huey sing gospel and country music.

 

Since there's already a standards hits compilation CD, a collection of alternative edits/mixes doesn't seem like a bad idea to me.

 

All fine and good but it isn't marketed as such.

The Collected series features album versions of hits from artists. This is the anomaly in the bunch.

 

I'd rather compilations include single versions than album versions, generally.

 

Yeah if it's part of a series known for something and it breaks format, that's kinda strange.

But I am all for comps with rare versions of tracks. Deep In The Shallows by the Church has some otherwise unavailable (on CD anyway) single edits and promo mixes and such. (Sadly most of those are needledrops and all are horribly brickwalled...) It's arguably a marketing gimmick to make hardcore collectors re-buy a pointless compilation and an annoyance to casual fans who want the full songs... but hey, I'd rather pay $15 instead of $68 for the "Short Circuit Mix" of "Unified Field"! ('Course, I'll still buy that damn promo single...)

 

The execs who want this junk believes most of the target audience wants what they heard on the radio when they were kids.

If you're a more serious collector of Huey Lewis, I hope you get a release that satisfies you soon, but they are mainly trying to make money.

 

No big deal. HL&TN isn't exactly high on my wantlist . Just looked into this volume of a compilation series I'm familiar with for kicks, saw the tracklist which gave me a good chuckle, and thought I should share.

I've seen this theme of sabotaging compilations with edits and unneeded tracks far too often and figured a thread would get the discussion going on that topic.

 

On the flip side, it is kinda cool to get different versions on a comp. Say you start with a greatest hits with edits and remixes and the like, then progress to the albums and find the same songs in a different light. Plus, with the way formats have changed, singles don't really have a time limit anymore (unless you count 10 minutes as a "time limit") and not a ton of people get new music from the radio, where songs need to be edited so X company can advertise Y terrible product and DJs can pretend they're funny. Plus, with streaming, there's virtually no risk. So having different versions of the same songs is, IMO, a pretty cool way to do it... depending on the artist and context, of course. I'm sure buying a Joni Mitchell comp and getting an acid/house remix of "Woodstock" would probably be a bad decision on the label's end.

 

...But don't you know that remixes are KEWWEELL? They're post-post-modern! DJs are the new musicians! With their remixin', they create NEW, spooky, grooves for us!
And old bands and later-years covers, why, that takes you the ROOTS of rock'n' roll.
So it's all good!

 

To be fair, the album is called Collected, not "Greatest Hits" or "Best of". The decision to include single edits is fine. There is a greatest hits compilation if that is desired. Or you can buy the actual albums.
Huey Lewis & The News - Greatest Hits

I don't see anybody complaining about Clapton's Crossroads box set including alternate versions of the album songs. The same goes for Hendrix's Purple box sets. Jane's Addiction released Live and Rare and Kettle Whistle long before they released a proper greatest hits package called Up From The Catacombs: The Best Of, then they released another anthology called A Cabinet of Curiosities. These kinds of compilations are for the hard core fans.

I personally think it's more annoying when there is an actual Greatest Hits compilation, then they include an edit. I think it's fine if they include a singles edits, but Aerosmith's Greatest Hits includes awful edits of Sweet Emotion and Walk This Way. Sweet Emotions is particularly bad without the Talkbox intro. Aerosmith was the typical AOR band where radio didn't play the singles, they played the album cuts. But for what it's worth, this is still the bands biggest selling album certified Diamond.

 

The ' heart ' of rock and roll is still beating.

 

Please read my latest replies. I already addressed these points.

 

This thread has made me go & find this album because I like single edits & remixes, thanks all!

 

Simple solution. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. Not a hard process to understand. I can’t believe you’re arguing about a Huey Lewis release.

 

They did it cause it's hip to be square.

 

If we all followed this rule there would be no forum.

 

How many copies of Huey Lewis do you think would sell on disc today? Five hundred, seven hundred, a thousand tops?

 

Not a Huey Lewis fan, but taking this on the surface I'm guessing(?) this is more for hardcore and obsessive fans.

I've been in the same situation with 80's artists that I am more obsessed with where I either keep my urge down to collect every 12 inch or single mix out there....or just buy a collection that already has this bundled together.

IDK, maybe this exec was a fan actually.

 

If its going to be a complete collection, it should have everything really where possible. Although some do it to tedium, and make poor decisions on sequencing the tracks. (Prince's 1999 Deluxe Disc 2 for example, mono radio edits).

At least it doesn't come with a board game or rubber mask, although they have missed an obvious Huey Lewis trick by packaging it without an axe...

 

Why would a record company want to make a half dozen or so releases that are still in print obsolete to all but the most hardcore of fan?