How many "greatest hits" can a single band possibly have?
This is a message I posted on CompuServe back when Rock Block came out; I ran across it while I was preparing the Guide for the Web and thought some people might be interested in my comments. I also tallied up the song frequencies up to that time on the compilation albums, which are all from Star Song; as it turns out, there actually aren't as many "hits" as you would expect from so many albums...
Posted to CompuServe: 14-Oct-95 19:44:50
Subject: yet another...
From: Michael Jones
To: ALLYet another Petra Greatest Hits Album. This brings the grand total up to what, about seventeen, eighteen? :->
It's called "The Rock Block", if anyone even cares any more. It does have one single redeeming quality (besides some good songs, if you don't already have the old albums): it has the backward masking from "Judas' Kiss" played back like it is on the album... and also reversed! So if you didn't know already that he says what'reyoulookingforthedevilforwhenyououghtabelookingfortheLord... oh, I'm sorry, did I give away the secret? :->
Oddly enough, the newest songs on this album are from On Fire!, which came out in 1988. <shrug> The tunes are from On Fire!, This Means War!, Back To The Street, Not Of This World, More Power To Ya, Never Say Die, and one from Beat The System. I wonder why they didn't include the newer stuff? I suppose they want you to buy those albums in their entirety. <shrug again>
So I did a little counting. Out of five albums and one triple album of "greatest hits", there are excatly 44 different songs (not counting those atrocious remix things). Only twelve of those songs appear once in all of the compilations... 15 of the songs appear twice, 15 of them appear three times, and two of the songs actually appear four times! In a series of SIX ALBUMS the songs appear FOUR TIMES? So let's see. If we count the triple album (War & Remembrance) as three albums, and divide 44 songs by 8 albums, we get an average of 5.5 different tunes per album. Okay okay, count W&R as ONE SINGLE album... that gives us an average of 7.3 different songs per album. If you buy them all, you will own the entire first side of Never Say Die (twice), almost the whole first side of More Power To Ya and This Means War!, and roughly half of several other albums. Not a single note recorded since On Fire!, though. Okay, a couple of new notes in the medley things. What I still haven't figured out is why don't people just buy the original albums and get it over with? Oh oh, I remember... it's because they don't know any better.
If anyone still thinks there's not an AWFUL lot of marketing going on in CCM...
-MJ
(It has since occurred to me that the reason there are so many compilation albums is that Star Song is trying to cash in on the part of the Petra back catalog that they own. (Petra moved to Word Records in 1989 with Petra Praise.) Also note that the "tribute album" Never Say Dinosaur, which is also from Star Song, only includes music from the back catalog (Well, actually one of the songs on Never Say Dinosaur, "Wake Up", is from Petra's first album, which I would assume is now owned by Word.)
