Napster from Hell
Back when I was growing up, you could always count on a beautifully cheap collection of current hits issued forth from the folks at K-Tel. Albums costing no more than $4.95 most days with such great titles as Hit Explosion!, Dancing Madness, Chartbusters '83, 20 Power Hits, and so on. It was great in those days pre-MP3, pre-World Wide Web, pre-everything that could ever allow you to have the world's largest jukebox at the click of a mouse. So many fantastic hits packed onto one big-ass cheap compilation that saved you from going out and buying the individual albums that more than likely reeked aside from their one big hit that everyone loved to hear.
Boy, how times haven't changed.
K-Tel may have more or less been relegated to the background in the years since, but Sony has picked up the mantle and run madly with it with its NOW That's What I Call Music! series. Debuting in the United States 1998 with its first volume, each NOW collection has managed to hit the Billboard Top 10 chart, with volumes 4, 6, 7, and 9 each debuting at number one. I don't actually ever recall a K-Tel album generating such excitement, but then that kind of thing just seemed unfathomable at the time because everyone realized they were just cheap collections of hits that were more or less like a professional mix tape.
But during the late '90s, the music trends changed after an explosive decade opener and a weaker middle period. That disposable pop music became the cash cow of major labels everywhere made a thing like NOW an RIAA member's dream come true. Hawk it on TV first, throw in a cheap duffel bag or some other two dollar product that was supposedly "free", but didn't seem to be so in light of the $17.95 plus shipping and handling tag, and then sell it in the stores at about the same price sans bag and reap even more benefits.
Every six months, it seems like there's a new NOW CD to be had. This seems reasonable considering the fact that the first one came out in '98. Sure enough, these discs could be used as time capsules to highlight all the ridiculously vapid hits that have been dominating the airwaves for the past few years. But the question that begs to be asked is how long could one possibly want to listen to any of these volumes after their respective songs have eked out their shelf life (approximately three or four weeks)? Especially given the fact that you can go online, get these tunes and toss away a cheap CD-R without regret after you've become sick of it, or even make one of those dreaded "mix tapes" or CDs from a pal.
The labels probably wouldn't like me saying that, but really, why? These things don't sell cheap and are often found in 99 cent bargain bins in used shops shortly after their initial run because they are disposable. Let's be honest here. The NOW compilations might rake in a lot of dough easily because the songs contained on them have been driven into everyone's skulls on the radio and TRL by the time the newest volume is issued so that everybody who falls for such marketing can rush out and buy the thing, despite the fact that they probably really won't play it for very long. But does this whoring out of mostly already over-exposed and flat out boring popsters really justify the sale? You bet it does. If one ever needed proof that most popular music these days is created for the sole purpose of making money with no long-term futures in sight, one only need to look to these compilations.
All you have to do is take a quick look through the track list to see this fact screaming back at you. Volume 10 features such expected and bland choices as Britney Spears ("Overprotected"), NSYNC ("Girlfriend)", Shakira("Underneath Your Clothes"), Celine Dion ("A New Day Has Come"), Moby ("We Are All Made Of Stars"), Blink-182 (sounding the same as always with "First Date"), Lenny Kravitz ("Stillness of Heart"), and Nickelback ("How You Remind Me"). In between those, you get some tastes of the Latin pop side of the tracks thanks to Enrique Iglesias ("Escape"), Marc Anthony ("I've Got You"), and Jennifer Lopez ("I'm Gonna Be Alright"). This is pure gold! Well, it at least equals lots of green in guaranteed sales. Whether or not you'll really want to hear "We Are All Made of Stars", "Girlfriend", or "Overprotected" after you've moved on to the next teen idol or the third listen is really up to you (and one can really feel NSYNC's star fading extremely fast by this point, even if Justin Timberlake wasn't doing a solo album). But that's not the point. NOW is released to capitalize on impulse buying without a worry as to whether or not the consumer is going to listen to this disc two weeks after purchasing it. Why worry after the money's spent? The most you'll likely make selling it back at a used store is about five bucks, so the consumer loses either way.
Of course, there are some smoke and mirrors tactics in deployment here. Every NOW disc has a few tracks that are in some remixed fashion. But so what? If anything, the Darkchild remix of Britney Spears' "Overprotected" just drives home the fact that the girl can't sing even more painfully. NSYNC's "Girlfriend" gets a Neptunes remix featuring some vocals by Nelly, and the J-Lo/Nas collaboration "I'm Gonna Be Alright" gets remixed into a superfluous new version by Track Masters. But hey, you have to have something to sell these discs. Otherwise, who wants a collection of songs they already have, right? I'd say a lot of the younger demographic that so many of these artists are sold to don't usually care that the "new mixes" of these tunes usually pale in comparison to their already limp originals.
Really, though, how the hell does Celine Dion's "A New Day Has Come" fit between Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles" and Moby? And for all of Moby's posturing and overbearing sensitive mewling, you'd think he'd opt out of being on such a collection. But then again the guy has sold his tracks to every company imaginable just to get ahead, so I suppose it makes sense in the end.
Other luminaries present here are Aaliyah ("More Than A Woman" -- and haven't we milked this girl enough, already?), musiq ("halfcrazy"), B2K ("Uh Huh"), Paulina Rubio ("Don't Say Goodbye"), Jade Anderson ("Sugar High"), and Ja Rule and Ashanti ("Always On Time"). You've heard these songs, you love 'em (or so Sony, Universal, EMI, and Zomba are hoping) and you'll be singing along in no time, probably if you even don't want to. After all, hearing Nelly drop his style all over NSYNC is…unintentionally hilarious, but insanely mind-numbing as well.
So is there anything good on here? It has to be asked if you're not a big time radio listener and don't depend on MTV to fill your CD collections. Well, having previously enjoyed Kylie Minogue's Fever earlier this year, I didn't mind hearing "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" for the zillionth time, but there are far better songs on that album to slap onto a compilation. So surprisingly (to me, anyway) that leaves the Baha Men's "Move It Like This", an infectious slab of dance-pop all about dancing. You can never lose with a song about dancing! So it would seem that the wily charms of NOW even snagged me in for three minutes.
NOW is nothing more than a quick fix for light entertainment. That's what it's always been, and it's what it will continue to be. Certain labels used to sell and send out compilation promo discs that were just like this. One wonders why they still can't be affordable like in the old K-Tel days. One also tends to wonder what will happen when and if the trends turn once again and such compilations become as passé as those K-Tel records. But by then it won't really matter. The money will have been earned, the collected stars long since faded and the next group will be regurgitated somehow. Coming soon to NOW: The White Stripes, The Strokes, The Vines, and The Hives. At least in a funky remixed form with Nelly.
— 13 September 2002
