NOW That's What I Call Music!: A Retrospective
With over 100 albums under its belt and spawning countless spinoffs, the NOW That’s What I Call Music! series of compilation albums has dominated Whole Foods checkout counters for decades. Most people may write off the series as a relic of the past which has no valid reason to exist today, but its engaging narratives, rich development, and sheer depth continue to captivate many dedicated fans. But how did such a fascinating series ultimately receive such a shameful fate in the public eye? In order to find an answer, we must take a look back at the complete history of the series.
Created by Sony Music in collaboration with Universal Music Group, the original NOW That’s What I Call Music! was released in the UK on November 28, 1983 and quickly became the premiere compilation album on the market. The album received universal praise and is regarded by music historians to be the album that single handedly revived the compilation format, and with the album practically begging for a sequel, fans were hungry for more. And they got more. A lot more.
101 more.
When your series has more entries than there are seats in the United States Senate, there are bound to be some ups and downs along the way, but for the first half of its run, NOW That’s What I Call Music! was astonishingly consistent. From massive commercial hits like NOW That’s What I Call Music! 29 and NOW That’s What I Call Music! 6 to cult classics such as NOW That’s What I Call Music! 11, the series truly had something for everybody. And, in November of 1999, just before the turn of the century, the NOW That’s What I Call Music! franchise made history with the release of NOW That’s What I Call Music! 44. Often considered to be the spiritual successor to NOW That’s What I Call Music! 27, the album is nothing short of a modern masterpiece, selling enough copies to be certified 7x Platinum. It firmly solidified the brand’s status as a top-tier media franchise and inspired many (myself included) to develop a strong passion for music.
The NOW That’s What I Call Music! catalog continued to grow over the years while maintaining an impressive (although increasingly shaky) standard of quality, but everything changed in 2010 with the release of NOW That’s What I Call Music! 75. Coming off of the release of NOW That’s What I Call Music! 74, arguably the best NOW That’s What I Call Music! album since NOW That’s What I Call Music! 59, expectations were understandably high, but the album was a failure on almost every level. It alienated both fans and critics alike, seemingly laughing in the face of the legacy of all 74 albums that came before it. Simply put, it was the first time I ever listened to a NOW That’s What I Call Music! album and thought to myself: “that’s not what I call music.”
Ever since the dreadful misstep that was NOW That’s What I Call Music! 75, the franchise seems to have run into an identity crisis, desperately trying to figure out what audiences want out of a new NOW That’s What I Call Music! release. This is when the spinoff series’ really came into full force. Some of these releases such as NOW That’s What I Call Dance Hits! and NOW That’s What I Call Drivetime! showed promise, recapturing some of the magic of the franchise’s former glory, but with albums like NOW That’s What I Call A Song! and the notoriously bad NOW That’s What I Call Running! 2015, fans of the series felt utterly betrayed. We wanted a stronger focus on the core releases, ones that fall under the canon story arc. There’s nothing wrong with having disconnected subplots or even alternate timelines that take place in the same universe, but you need a strong core plot to back it up. Albums like NOW That’s What I Call Disney® Bedtime! wouldn’t have been quite as hard to swallow if NOW That’s What I Call Music! 94 wasn’t so underwhelming.
So what’s next for NOW That’s What I Call Music!? It’s hard to say exactly where the series will go, but it has become painfully obvious that the executives at Sony and UMG have completely lost touch with what fans of the series want. We can continue to put up with mediocre releases, choosing only to reminisce in the glory days of the past, but there’s a reason the NOW in the title is capitalized. We deserve a better representation of what is being called music today, not what was called music in the past, and the only way we will ever achieve this is if we come together as a society to demand change, making our collective voices heard and declaring once and for all what we call music.
By Jaden Ellman