In preparation for the mammoth task ahead of my I decided to conduct a quick experiment which ended up taking my 3 days to complete. I basically wanted to compile a list of best tracks that have ever appeared on a NOW! album. After making a brief list of those I remembered from the albums I owned, I realised this was going to slightly swayed in favour of Now 10-16, so I thought it best to compile the complete track listings from every album so far. Almost 4,000 tracks!
So, the experiment was to see if music really was better in the good old days compared to , er, now. And surprise, surprise in my completely scientific way I can determine that of the 297 tracks I picked most of them are from the first half of NOW!’s life.
This is of course a nonsense, as this was based purely on the titles and artists, and since I barely know most of the tracks from the past 30-odd NOW! albums, it’s obvious that most would come from the earlier albums. Consider there are 8 tracks from the last ten NOW! albums. And three of those are by Adele. My education in modern music really needs a top up.
You can view the entire list on Spotify: Now- Best pre blog
There’s a few missing due to Spotify licensing (Oasis being a major casualty) but I think it’s a fair reflection of just how good NOW! can be.
Once my odyssey is done I will revisit this again and compile the post-blog version, and see how different the two lists are.
I’m happy to hear your thoughts on this. Let me know what I’ve missed (checking, of course that it did actually appear on a Now album!), or what has no place on this list, and I’ll argue with you in the comments.