Anthology Acts (Bands With More Compilations Than Albums)

Thought about this while looking through the KMFDM discography on Spotify. Who are the worst offenders in this regard? Motörhead and Black Sabbath are probably up there, too.

The sidebar of an artist's page on Discogs is useful for this, e.g. Elvis Presley 332 albums, 1937 compilations.

There are 12 Who studio albums; I can name more than 12 Who compilations just off the top of my head, and I'm sure there's more than that.

Loads and loads of old soul and jazz acts fit this, for example Sam Cooke, who has twentysomehing albums but 200 compilations.

Outside the oldies, Frankie Goes to Hollywood has 2 studio albums, 20 compilations.

Morrissey : 19 albums, 21 compilations

J. Hendrix : 4 albums, 338 compilations!

Discogs is tricky, though, because they’re probably counting compilation *appearances* (movie soundtracks, genre roundups, etc.) not just comps by that one artist.

Yeah, even for the albums, they count 157 albums for Hendrix !

I suspect this is not entirely the fault of either Hendrix or Sam Cooke.

Discogs is tricky, though, because they’re probably counting compilation *appearances* (movie soundtracks, genre roundups, etc.) not just comps by that one artist.

first obvious thoughts

Sex Pistols
Stone Roses
Jeff Buckley

The Clash, which is funny because most of those comps completely avoid one of their albums, and even when they don't, they only include one track.

Saint Etienne seems to put out a comp for each studio album (not counting the various Bob Stanley comps), and sure enough it looks like they have 10 of each.

New Order must have more comps than actual albums.

Joy Division certainly does

Nearly all of those Clash comps are single-market promo only, or studio albums boxed together. (For ones actually compiled by the band, if you count b-side collections and box sets, you do end up dead even with studio albums made by the band.)

Kind of the opposite, but I love this so much: The Best Of Zodiac Mindwarp And The Love Reaction is literally their first album w/ the cover zoomed in & cropped to frame out the album title, and "The Best Of" in an incongruous yellow box slapped on top.

For seven years, McAlmont & Butler compilations outnumbered studio albums by 1 to 0, having split up after two singles, but then they spoilt it by reforming long enough to make an album.

A special category is dance producers whose only ‘albums’ are singles comps.