… so I was reading Chuck Klosterman’s meta-review of the new Guns ‘n’ Roses album, which is worth reading (although wrong, wrong, wrong!) and I was struck by this passage:

Chinese Democracy is (pretty much) the last Old Media album we’ll ever contemplate in this context—it’s the last album that will be marketed as a collection of autonomous-but-connected songs, the last album that will be absorbed as a static manifestation of who the band supposedly is, and the last album that will matter more as a physical object than as an Internet sound file.

Like the rest of his review, this is inaccurate. But what’s important is this is what the industry believes (because lots of people download songs a la carte, apparently). And, since this is a widely-held belief by music producers, I think we now have grounds to hope for the demise of the greatest hits album!

Greatest hits albums are usually terrible—just the label trying to cash in on their back-catalog.

But worst! Worst of all are the Greatest Hits records that go out of their way to say, as pictured above, that these are only the *current* hits, and there are likely to be more. How pretentious is that? And how often true? It’s so obviously trying to enhance the image of the band while diminishing the actual product.

Now I like Lamb. I saw them live at least once, and their music is often strong, particularly the K & D remix of Trans Fatty Acid, but “Greatest Hits -2004?” Whatever.