It was 30 years ago that a partnership between major record labels came up with an idea so simple, it was amazing it hadn't been done before. Compilation albums of hits by various artists were nothing new, but they tended to consist of hits from years gone by, in a specific genre (for example 20 Golden Country Greats, or Hits of the Sixties, or other such titles I just made up!). The 'Now! That's What I Call Music' (often shortened to just 'Now!') series of compilation records was different. These records, selling for a reasonable price, were issued originally on double vinyl LP or cassette (CD came later) and contained a bumper selection of hit singles by current acts, and the songs themselves were all still fresh in the mind, having been in the charts only weeks earlier.
The fact that the records were on double LP was also important, the limitations of the format meant that to obtain optimum sound quality, a vinyl LP could not go for much longer than 20 minutes a side. Earlier compilation albums released by budget labels always tried to cram at least an hour's worth of music onto a single LP, at the expense of volume and clarity.
The format was an immediate success, as a buyer could have a whole album full of recent hits at a fraction of the price it would have cost to buy them all as singles. Follow-up compilations were soon released, settling at the rate of three per year and always including the chart hits from the intervening period.
Other record labels soon got in on the act, and similar compilations featuring hits from acts on their rosters began to appear in the shops. For a time in the 1980s, the album charts were almost completely dominated by these compilation albums as they sold in large numbers. That all changed at the end of the 1980s when the same record labels began to complain that their marquee acts were being kept off the top of the album charts by these compilations. The chart compilers sympathised, and a separate chart was established to contain only these multi-artist compilation albums. Where that left the credibility of the album charts, based as it was on sales, was questionable. However, the Now! series has continued to this day, at the time of writing the 84th 'Now!' album has just been released, although these days it is issued on CD and also as a digital download. Even this is better value, since it works out cheaper to buy a download of the Now! compilations than it would be to buy the same tracks separately.
The original vinyl LP track listing for the first 'Now! That's What I Call Music' album was as follows:
Side one
Phil Collins : "You Can't Hurry Love"
Duran Duran : "Is There Something I Should Know"
UB40 : "Red Red Wine"
Limahl : "Only for Love"
Heaven 17 : "Temptation"
KC & The Sunshine Band : "Give It Up"
Malcolm McClaren : "Double Dutch"
Bonnie Tyler : "Total Eclipse of the Heart"
Side two
Culture Club : "Karma Chameleon"
Men Without Hats : "The Safety Dance"
Kajagoogoo : "Too Shy"
Mike Oldfield : "Moonlight Shadow"
Men at Work : "Down Under"
Rock Steady Crew : "Hey You (Rock Steady Crew)"
Rod Stewart : "Baby Jane"
Paul Young : "Wherever I Lay My Hat"
Side three
New Edition : "Candy Girl"
Kajagoogoo : "Big Apple"
Tina Turner : "Let's Stay Together"
The Human League : "(Keep Feeling) Fascination"
Howard Jones : "New Song"
UB40 : "Please Don't Make Me Cry"
Peabo Bryson & Roberta Flack : "Tonight I Celebrate My Love"
Side four
Tracey Ullman : "They Don't Know"
Will Powers : "Kissing with Confidence"
Genesis : "That's All"
The Cure : "The Love Cats"
Simple Minds : "Waterfront"
Madness : "The Sun and the Rain"
Culture Club : "Victims"
Looking through these compilations, they are a time capsule of the years in which they were released. To close this look back, here is an advert from 1983 advertising that very first Now! album (2023 edit: dead link replaced):
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