Albums that sound like Greatest Hits collections, but are actually all-new...

Phil Ochs-Greatest Hits (AKA "50 Phil Ochs Fans Can't Be Wrong")

Yeah, funnily enough that was the LP I saw yesterday, prompting this thread!

Can this be done without being ironic?

Cockney Rejects - Greatest Hits Vol 2

BUT not Cockney Rejects - Greatest Hits Vol 3 - cos that's all live versions of old songs!

Cat Power-The Greatest

The Who Sell Out

Fugazi - End Hits

Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall

aphex twin - drukqs

Do we mean the titles make then sound like Greatest Hits compilations, or do we mean the songs on the album seem to be representative of various stages of the history of the artist in question, but are all actually new? The latter's a more interesting question, I think. And Shack's The Corner of Miles & Gil fits the bill.

I agree with JimD, it seems most people are just posting titles.
I think Simon and Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water, fits well also.

The New Pornographers' Twin Cinema sounds like a chronological greatest-hits, complete with crappy back end and a surprisingly good reunion song tacked on at the end.

Do we mean the titles make then sound like Greatest Hits compilations

Based on the example that started off the thread I think it's pretty clear.

Ian Brown - Golden Greats

As clear as can possibly be when an OP immediately changes his mind 180 degrees!

Yeah, I still don't know...

What do you mean, the OP has only posted twice, and both were all new albums with titles that sound like greatest hits collections.

Yeah, he did!

thread hijack!
JimD:
“do we mean the songs on the album seem to be representative of various stages of the history of the artist in question, but are all actually new?”
I agree with JimD that this is a more interesting topic.

one way in which this can happen is if multiple producers/writers/arrangers were involved. also if there were a lot of successful distinctive singles from the album (especially if the album follows them as a summing-up of development so far - e.g Never Mind The Bollocks). or if so many songs are well known that there are few if any sleeper/deep cuts.

The O’Jays - Backstabbers
and The Spinners - Spinners (1973)
always seemed this way to me, especially compared to their more seamless follow-ups.

several Beatles albums are like this too, e.g. Revolver, Pepper’s, Abbey Road
and Michael Jackson - Thriller

what are some others?

well the first Velvet Underground LP is an obvious one - varied sounding songs pretty much all well-known

RTX – Veterans of Disorder

the first Pretenders album

Missing Persons - Spring Session M

Born in the USA

Daft Punk - Discovery
Kendrick Lamar - DAMN.

The Cars S/T

Prodigy - Experience

Alphaville - Forever Young. (I'm a bit surprised that only four songs on that album were singles.)

Cyndi Lauper, She’s So Unusual

Future Islands - Singles
(not a compilation as the name suggests but a studio album)

Flappy otm

"golden hits" = 3 inferior re-recordings of their early '60s hits, 3 covers, and 4 new songs. it was reissued in 2004 under the similarly misleading title The Best of the Paris Sisters

https://i.imgur.com/GJFo8or.jpg

And the cover photo is obviously not The Paris Sisters!

huh, it's obviously them! (and fwiw they're wearing proper clothes on the back cover). I'm not sure who thought a lingerie photoshoot would revitalize their image and I'm not sure how many pervs bought the album on the strength of the cover art, but they never had any more hits and they broke up a year later

honestly all 3 Vampire Weekend albums. I was going to say especially the first one but it's really all of them

xp I stand corrected, I have never seen swinging sixties Paris Sisters. I always think of them looking like this:

http://www.history-of-rock.com/Paris_Sisters.jpg

I don't really like "Back In Black" but for a year or 2 I thought it was a greatest hits album.

Turns out "Singles Going Steady" is a comp. I wasn't sure until just now.

I keep second guessing that one too

There's alot of overlap between this and "all killer, no filler" albums, but there's a difference between something like the first Cars or Pretenders albums that were all great songs but still were obviously the work of the same band recorded around the same time. Some albums are full of great songs but have tracks that sound much older or newer than they are, or barely sound like they're all the work of the same band. Those have a 25 year retrospective greatest-hits feel and multi-artist compilation vibe respectively, and are much more rare and interesting.

It's craziness that "Excitable Boy" hasn't already been posted to this thread.

Electric Six have, unbelievably, got on to have 14 more albums that the one you've heard something.