The Greatest, Greatest Hits

Ok My submission is
Staring at the sea - The Cure (CD edition)

Substance - New Order is a close second  - there are a lot of variations, but I think the 87 CD edition is all you really need

The Velvet Underground - Chronicles  - odd import but that's were all the good music was in the 80s/90s - the import section
(although takes a weird stance on Loaded, by only including live tracks)

Squeeze - 45s and under gets an honorable mention

I can't believe I just learned this today~
Doug Yule – lead vocals on "She's My Best Friend"

I'm assuming that none of the Eagles Greatest Hitses will chart here.

Went to Walgreens and Substance was still in cd player.

Nope, still the best…imagine the sequence BLT->True Faith ~>Ceremony

And for many songs they are the definitive 12” versions! Perfect Kiss and Thieves Like Us are absolutely epic in their full glory!

The Jam - Snap

The 29 track double LP with the free live EP.  8)

The jam is one of those acts I just don’t get….great band name though…

I do love a town called malice

I swear that I had a Jam greatest hits CD when I was in college where the liner notes mentioned Weller going on to Style Council, etc. and specifically mentioning something along the lines of " Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler decided not to embarrass themselves and retired from music" or something.

It always cracked me up, but I've tried to find an image of it over the years and I've never been able to.  Maybe I dreamt it.

Erasure - Pop! The First 20 Hits

Now playing:

Side One of Queen's Greatest Hits

and AC/DC's greatest hits..  oh wait they never released one of those

also Big Star #1 Record/Radio City  ;D

while overplayed by the frat-bro crowd

Legend is pretty amazing


interesting foot note
As of September 2025, Legend has spent a total of 903 nonconsecutive weeks on the US Billboard 200 albums chart—the second-longest run in the chart's history

SeriousSideFX wrote:
while overplayed by the frat-bro crowd

Legend is pretty amazing


interesting foot note
As of September 2025, Legend has spent a total of 903 nonconsecutive weeks on the US Billboard 200 albums chart—the second-longest run in the chart's history

It’s not that it’s overplayed as much as it’s not representative of Bob Marley and/or the Wailers. It is disproportionately made up of light reggae pop love songs and songs from his last few albums. Obviously it’s been very successful at appealing to people with a very slight familiarity with reggae but it doesn’t seem to make people want to explore the rest of his vast catalog or other Jamaican music and that’s a great shame.

Fair assessment, but I'm sure that the amount of people who went on to go deep into bob and Jamacian music ….this was the gateway

while it might not encompass his whole musical career (there are 7 albums represented from 73-80) my opinion is there are zero duds on that

Let's just say you were to make a Legend 2.0, what are the 10 missing tracks?

But it’s under representative of his revolutionary period in favor of lighter pop reggae.

They made a sequel of sorts I think that helps balance things out but not many heard it. I forget the name…maybe Natural mystic?

There is so much great reggae it just seems criminal that Bob gets all the attention and that within Bob’s oeuvre the lighter pop fare.

Agree Legend could've been so much better.  It's basically Bob-Light.

Honestly, Pet Shop Boys Discography is pretty perfect. Though Substance is up there too. For as much as I enjoy Staring at the Sea, I usually put on Cure LPs because start to finish I want to enjoy the mood of each particular LP. New Order's LP masterpiece (to me) is Technique. Substance captures great songs, but it also has a couple re-recorded versions. "Temptation" is great, I prefer the original version of "Confusion". I also prefer the LP version of "Bizarre Love Triangle".

So for me that's why "Discography" wins out. Start to finish, the selection and version of each song is perfect and the pacing of it all works beautifully for me. As much as I love "Behaviour" and "Actually", "Discography" is the first Pet Shop Boys LP I'll ever reach for. That's what a truly great greatest hits will do.

(Though the Jam's "Snap!" is up there too.)