This week, “Morrissey’s Greatest Hits” — yet another new compilation from the ol’ Smiths frontman — climbed to #5 on the UK album charts. If you’re keeping track at home, the most recent leg of Morrissey’s Discography now reads:
Suedehead: The Best Of Morrissey (1997)
The CD Singles ’88-91′ (2000)
The CD Singles ’91-95′ (2000)
The Best Of Morrissey (2001 – US)
You Are The Quarry (2004)
Ringleader Of The Tormentors (2006)
Greatest Hits (2008)
See a pattern? Hint: The pattern is, Singles Album, Two-part Singles Album, US Only Singles Album, Studio Album, Studio Album, Singles Album.
The latest installment of Morrissey’s best does boast several improvements over its predecessors; “Suedehead” has been savvily placed at track nine instead of at track two on “Best of Morrissey” and a far too early track one on “Suedehead: The Best Of Morrissey,” finally allowing Greatest Hits listeners to build up the proper amount of anticipation before that particular song comes on.
Additionally, eight of the fifteen tracks come from Morrissey’s last two studio albums and two more are previously unreleased, making it a “Greatest Hits” album only in the same way that “Ocean’s Thirteen” could be considered a collection of the greatest actors in the history of Hollywood. “Glamorous Glue” and “November Spawned a Monster” have been replaced by the truly terrible “Irish Blood, English Heart” and “I Have Forgiven Jesus,” and all four singles off Ringleader of the Tormentors are included, in case you didn’t buy Ringleader of the Tormentors two years ago but somehow got really interested in Morrissey between April 2006 and now.
Here’s my biggest problem with this cd though, besides all that other stuff: Even if we forgive Morrissey for having no qualms about whipping another Best Of CD on us just two studio albums after his last one, why wouldn’t he just come out with a “Best Of: 2000-2008″ instead of literally taking ten very recent songs, tacking on the obligatory “Suedehead” and “Everyday Is Like Sunday,” and confidently mislabeling it as a career Greatest Hits retrospective? I’m sure he’s not done making music — how many more disguised Best Of imposters are we gonna get before he calls it quits?
I’ll go ahead and just update his Wikipedia now:
Studio Album With Two Good Songs (2009)
The More You Ignore Me: The Best Of Morrissey (2010)
Studio Album With Two Good Songs (2011)
Spawned a Monster: The Very Best Of Morrissey (2012)
Suedehead Is Track Five Now: Morrissey’s Greatest Hits (2013)
Like Sunday: Morrissey Is Of Whom These Songs Are The Best (2014 – 2 discs)
Hold On To Your Friends: A Tribute To Morrissey (2015 – Various Artists)
Head Of Suede: Seriously, The Best Of Morrissey (2016 – just the entire 2015 Tribute album plus “Suedehead”)
