Sunday, August 30, 2009

Best of Albums

Don't get me wrong. I like it when artists release "best-of" albums filled with their favorite music. However, what I dislike is when they release too many or too soon. Celtic Woman and Hayley Westenra both released albums only after a career of five years and less than five international albums. Enya did the same thing, a career of about ten years and four albums (I count "Enya" and "The Celts" as the same album), but good thing was I did not own her CD "Memory of Trees" and thus received some new surprises when I received it as a birthday present when I was about nine. But what makes me wonder what's going on is that she's released two other "best of" CDs and just two days ago announced a brand-new one coming out in November. Four best of CDs and seven studio albums. That screams "money-making" to me. Compare that to her sister Maire/Moya Brennan who has released seven solo albums over almost twenty years (roughly the same as Enya) but no best of CDs. Clannad has also released an insane amount of compilations, but I think that is largely because they stopped recording twelve years ago (though I'm eagerly waiting for their acoustic album that's supposed to be released soon).

In the end, I think most of the time "best of" CDs are just an excuse for a recording company to make some more money without going into a studio. Just goes to show, I think, how much the music industry is about making money and sucking the artists dry at their expense.

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