Greatest Hits Deluge

Well, I read this little clip on Entertainment Weekly last night and was aghast:

It's never too soon for your first greatest hits album. Fans eager to have the best of both of Hilary Duff's prior CDs on one disc (along with three new songs) wanted 207,000 copies of Most Wanted.

Now, you can imagine my shock when I read "both." I actually had to go back and read it again, just to make sure.

I'm no fan of Ms. Duff and I certainly don't want to detract from her talents, but are you kidding me??!

So she made TWO CDs and her third is a GREATEST HITS!?!? Oh, c'mon! It's ridiculous. And can you imagine that there were actually over 200,000 people who not only bought it (I'm sure it's gonna sell much more than that before it's run is over) but that couldn't wait for the damn thing to be out. They had to have it the very first week!!

Incredible. I have a policy of never buying a greatest hits if I already have all the albums of an artist. Why? Because I already have all those songs, just not on the same medium, which nowadays, if you have a cd burner, is quite easy to fix. As for the usually lonely new addition of a previously unreleased track, well, if you really die to own that, buy the single, or save the money (if it's not issued as a single.) Purchasing a whole CD for one track is demented and is part of the reason why the record industry keeps issuing greatest hits and Hollywood keeps making the same movies over and over again: people buy them. You might argue that all those people didn't own her previous CDs, which is why they bought this one. My reply to that brings me to my next point.

I think Congress should enact legislation to forbid all artist from releasing a greatest hits unless they already have a minimum of 10 albums to their name.

But this might stifle their creativity (for that lonely new track,) you might complain. To which I would reply, Perhaps, but it would save dumb consumers millions of dollars and a lot of frustration (for when thye'd realize they already own all those songs.)

And to those who'd argue that Congress has more pressing things to do than worrying about things like this, I'd like to point out that it's not like Congress doesn't already pass frivolous legislation (Freedom Fries anyone?)