Greatest Hits Volume 1: When Did The Eighties Actually End? This research looks at the proliferation of Greatest Hits albums at the beginning of the 1990s, as a barometer of cultural change that marks the end of the 1980s. Tracing the UK album charts between 1986 and 1996 it will look at the rise of the Greatest Hits package as a tour de force: peaking in 1992 with 29 compilations making the Top 1, and 47% of the end of year Top 30 comprised of re-releases and anthologies. More so than the discreet genres that defined the era (Rave, Acid House, Grunge, Brit Pop etc), I will argue that the success of the Greatest Hits album is reflective of a much wider milieu and, as such, can be read against a number of key narratives. Firstly, t significance of the Greatest Hits album can be attributed to the success of the Compact Disc in positioning an older audience demographic as pivotal consumers. In this sense, it completed the process of canonisation and the framing of pop music history around a body of ‘classic’ artists, albums and songs. Secondly, the Greatest Hits album represented excellent value for money: at a time when CDs were approximately a third more expensive than vinyl and cassette editions of the same releases, the Greatest Hits offered a sure return on a relatively high investment. However, the success of the Greatest Hits album is also about generational shift: the nostalgia of Baby Boomers in middle age, and perhaps also the diminished cultural prerogative of Generation X. It is here, after all, we encounter the first Generation Y teenagers, who will go on to become proto-Millienials at the end of the decade: the children who bought records by novelty pop act Jive Bunny and recycled soap stars from Stock Aitken Waterman. This is, perhaps, the first generation for whom engaging in pop music culture with your parents was not only technologically possible, but ideologically compatible: the children of Boomers for whom rock ’n’ roll had been routinised since infancy and for whom the Greatest Hits album had a singular allure. This is the generation that would go on to embrace X-Factor, the jukebox musical and give Take That a 21st Century renaissance: in short, rejecting pop music as clandestine and subversive; and celebrating, instead, wholesome family fun.
コメント