Several things are bona fida indicators of the onset of Christmas and the festive season:  Blocked sinus’s, the proliferation of pink tinsel in corner shops, Coke ad’s with that horrible theme tune.  But one thing stands alone as a true marker of the yuletide, leading us down a sleety alley of forced festivity , drunken squabbles with the family and ultimate disappointment in one’s presents.  And that, sweet babes, is the Greatest Hits Collection.

    
Yes, there really is nothing like the re-release of the greatest hit(s) of some middling artist to get me in the mood for a good solid bout of mulled wine induced vomiting.  Alongside the collections of a few vintage types- Rod Stewart, The Bee Gee’s, Manilow- this year sees the release of the first hits collections of such luminous artists as Simply Red, Christina Aguilera, The Stereophonics and The Smiths.  Now, if I am to disregard the fact that I dislike every one of the latter four artists I can, grudgingly, admit they have all had a fair few hits.  Not enough to warrant the title ‘Greatest Hits’ in my mind (more on that later) but, you know, some.


The release that really piqued the interest this year was that of Craig David.  Yes, that Craig David.  Now, before the haranguing starts and I get excused of being a music snob (which I am), the boy has got a coupla’ tunes.  Fill ‘Me in’ is probably one of the more memorable songs from that awful late 90’s/early noughties era of speed garage and its more gloopy R n’B offshoots (which this fits into).  ‘7 Days’, again, sticks in the head, if mainly for its memorable chorus (though I always forget what they did on Sunday). And there’s ‘Rewind’, of course. 


But is there anything else? Ermmm...Ooh, hold on! What about ‘What’s your flava’, where this Byronian figure makes some fine analogy comparing women to ice cream? Choice line- Hey, I'm taking 'em, apple and cinnamon/Girls aren't feeling em cant stop drippin ‘em….…


So that’s a no then.


That makes 3 tunes that I can come up with. And those were his first 3 singles, each off his first album. Yet his record company believe this fading British Rn’ B singer to be worthy of a greatest hits collection that, on the deluxe edition, has nineteen songs on it (even the standard has fifteen).  Why not just re-release the first album?


The answer is simple, and all in the name.  These are the greatest hits by Craig David. This of course implies that all of the tunes are great and at least as good as those three, and not an album where [scrabbles for calculator] 84.2% of the tunes wouldn’t even make it into the Woolworths bargain bin (God rest its soul). But of course the record company aren’t going to call it ‘The Statistically Quite Average Collection’, or ‘The Three Okay(ish) And The Rest An Absolute Fucking Fallacy Collection’ are they? Of course they’re not. No-one’s going to buy that.


Therefore, Granny on her annual trip to Woolies for little Jimmy’s Christmas present sees ‘Greatest Hits’, sees Craig’s handsome face and remembers vaguely that Jimmy liked the album with that ‘Bo Song’ when he was a wee lad, still in his Adidas Poppers. Well, she quite understandably reasons as she takes it to the checkout, this album must be really great if its his greatest hits; that song was years ago after all, even she can remember that.  And if he’s still going, he wouldn’t have gone all these years without making another song as good as that…would he?

     

Posted In Gobshout Classics, Mar 29 2011. Words - David