Ever since the success of the present-day pop-hits collection
\nNow<\/i>, labels are starting to jump on the bandwagon and
\nrelease their own compilations of songs you can, in some cases,
\nstill hear on the radio. This is by no means a new idea; they’ve
\nbeen doing this in England for some time now. But labels seem to
\nhave always been worried about how these discs would affect sales
\nof the albums the tracks are culled from.<\/p>\n
In the case of the latest entry to the race,
\nTotally Hits<\/i>, the end result might be surprising. Of the 18
\ngroups that are featured on this disc, my wife and I own all of two
\nof the groups’ albums. But I was so impressed with many of them
\nthat there’s an excellent chance I’ll be buying the full-length
\ndiscs soon. This is, simply put, one helluva party disc.<\/p>\n
First, one nit-picking point. Despite what the liner notes say,
\nthe version of Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” is not taken from the live<\/p>\n
Mirrorball<\/i> disc. This one, in fact, is from
\nSurfacing<\/i> – which I like even better. ‘Nuff said.<\/p>\n
Some of the inclusions on this disc are a bit surprising – after
\nall, Santana’s “Smooth” is still riding pretty high on the charts,
\nas is his album Supernatural. But seeing that this disc was
\nreleased by Santana’s present label, you can’t not put this song on
\n– and it does fit in well with the other selections.<\/p>\n
Some of the tracks on Totally Hits surprised me. After hearing
\nMonica’s “Angel Of Mine,” LFO’s “Summer Girls” and Usher’s “You
\nMake Me Wanna…”, I wondered why I hadn’t been listening to these
\nartists more often. (Never mind the fact that AlwaysJB beat me to
\nMonica’s
\nThe Boy Is Mine<\/i> review by several months.) And while I might
\nhave heard these tracks once or twice as my wife channel-surfed the
\ncar radio on trips to the store, this was the first chance I really
\ngot to hear these songs one-on-one – and I loved what I heard.<\/p>\n
Same goes for two artists whom I don’t consider to be anywhere
\nnear my favorites. Whitney Houston turns in a respectable
\nperformance on “Heartbreak Hotel” (a track featuring Faith Evans
\nand Kelly Price), while TLC impressed me with “No Scrubs,” a track
\nI admittedly had been avoiding thanks to the oversaturation of
\n“Waterfalls” a few years ago. See? Even an old curmudgeon like me
\ncan say he’s wrong about popular music. (Mark your calendars; this
\ncould be a first.)<\/p>\n
There were only two artists who failed to impress me on first
\nexposure. One was rapper Kid Rock, who sounded like desparately
\nwanted to be Limp Bizkit or Korn – and just fell short with
\n“Bawitdaba”. The other was Deborah Cox, who just could not win me
\nover with “Nobody’s Supposed To Be Here”. Still, that’s not a bad
\naverage.<\/p>\n
The upside of
\nTotally Hits<\/i> is that this disc has a lot of the music that
\nwill keep your parties going this holiday season. Whether you’re
\ngrooving to Brandy (“Almost Doesn’t Count”) or Cher (“Believe”) or
\nyou’re slow dancing with ‘N Sync (“(God Must Have Spent) A Little
\nMore Time On You”) or Faith Hill (“This Kiss”), this disc is, for
\nthe most part, a whole lot of fun, and correctly highlights some of
\nthe best popular music out there today. Pick it up – grab a few
\ncopies as holiday gifts for the family. After all, good times
\nshould be shared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5827],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-36343","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-various-artists","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36343"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36343"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}