May 28, 2019

Me and My Friends #5 - a real Greatest Hits

Hi gang.

The RHCP have two retail "greatest hits" collections.¹ The first, What Hits!? is mostly a joke, and only contains five or six songs that could actually be construed as a "hit".

What Hits!? was released by EMI in September 1992 to capitalise on the band's success after Mother's Milk, and, to a greater extent, "Under The Bridge". It also exploited a part of the 1991 contract that Warner Bros. signed with EMI; in order to let the RHCP switch labels, Warner Bros. would give one track to EMI, who could release it on a compilation of their choosing. That track was "Under the Bridge".²

The compilation's name supposedly came from Anthony, who was correct in wondering what hits, exactly, they were supposed to be talking about; of the eighteen tracks on the release, only eleven or so were actually released as singles (some of them promo-only at that). Even if it didn't make much sense, it was still a commercial success, selling about 4,500,000 copies worldwide, more than the first three EMI albums combined.

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The second compilation, Greatest Hits, which was released in November 2003, is much closer to the mark. Coming after eleven years of radio dominance, there's a lot more in the way of hits on it compared to What Hits!?, but there were still some curious choices made.

For instance, I don't think a RHCP hits collection (released in 2003) that doesn't feature "Can't Stop", "Aeroplane" or "Around the World" can be considered in any way complete.

I'm not sure why they weren't included; for a while people tossed around the idea that "Can't Stop" was an active single when Greatest Hits was released, but that isn't true: it left the charts in early 2003, eight or nine months beforehand.

"Aeroplane" was maybe ignored because the band love to ignore One Hot Minute. I don't agree with that, but I've come to expect it, so fair enough.

And as for "Around the World" - who knows. Why include "Parallel Universe", which charted at 37 on one chart in the US, over "Around the World", which was a top twenty hit on the same chart?

Greatest Hits was even more successful than What Hits!?, selling around 8.7 million copies worldwide, and is still on the Billboard Top 200 as I write this, sixteen years after its release. So, obviously, what it lacks hasn't prevented it from selling, and the executives at Warner Bros. would be most pleased with it.

But I think it could be done better, and that's not even addressing the fact that since November 2003, the RHCP have had three more albums, and each have had their own hits, some of them truly "great".

The only question is - how do we collect them? There are many ways to define a hit, and many ways to consider which "hits" are "greatest".

To be really boring about it, the Wikipedia article for "hit" is defined as follows:

In the United States and the United Kingdom, a single is usually considered a hit when it reaches the Top 40 of the official Billboard Magazine’s Hot 100 or the Top 75 of the UK Singles Chart and stays there for at least one week.

Let's explore a few ideas below:

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Option #1

As mentioned above, we can think of a hit through the context of the Billboard Hot 100. Here are the top-charting RHCP tracks on the Hot 100. I wont be focusing on the UK at all because, lets face it, the band are American, and the American charts have much more sway over the rest of the world than the UK ones.

Why the Hot 100? It's the chart that all the other charts funnel into. The RHCP have completely dominated rock radio in the United States - but can you really call a track a "hit" if it only charts on one format of radio? Would it make more sense to see which tracks actually crossed over into the "public" consciousness of the Hot 100? Here are all the tracks that charted on that, from low to high:

Red Hot Chili Peppers: Hot 100 Hits

• Under The Bridge (#2)

• Dani California (#6)

• Scar Tissue (#9)

• Otherside (#14)

• Soul To Squeeze (#22)

• Snow (Hey Oh) (#22)

• By The Way (#34)

• The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie (#38)

• The Zephyr Song (#49)

• Tell Me Baby (#50)

• Can't Stop (#57)

• Dark Necessities (#67)

• Californication (#69)

• Give It Away (#73)

Listen on Spotify here.

That's a pretty damn good collection. No real misses, though any hits compilation without "Higher Ground" seems wrong, and there's an unfortunate lack of One Hot Minute tracks. But those are the rules; I guess those albums just didn't have any real "hits".

Warner Bros. could release this and it would make a lot of people very happy. Is it better than the existing Greatest Hits? Possibly.

It's interesting that, to define hit by a "top 40" hit on the Hot 100 - the RHCP only have eight, and "Californication" or "Give It Away" aren't included in that at all. It's also strange to see "Rain Dance Maggie" chart so relatively high!

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Option #2

This next option lists all of the RHCP tracks that reached the top 20 of the "Alternative Songs" chart, which was formerly known as the "Modern Rock" chart. The RHCP are the kings of this chart; they've spent the most weeks at number one, and have the most number one songs on it. Here they are in release-date order.

Red Hot Chili Peppers: Modern Rock Hits

• Higher Ground (#11)

• Knock Me Down (#6)

• Show Me Your Soul (#10)

• Give It Away (#1)

• Under The Bridge (#6)

• Suck My Kiss (#15)

• Breaking The Girl (#19)

• Behind The Sun (#7)

• Soul To Squeeze (#1)

• Warped (#7)

• My Friends (#1)

• Aeroplane (#8)

• Love Rollercoaster (#14)

• Scar Tissue (#1)

• Around the World (#7)

• Otherside (#1)

• Californication (#1)

• By The Way (#1)

• The Zephyr Song (#6)

• Can't Stop (#1)

• Dosed (#13)

• Fortune Faded (#8)

• Dani California (#1)

• Tell Me Baby (#1)

• Snow (Hey Oh) (#1)

• Hump De Bump (#8)

• The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie (#1)

• Monarchy of Roses (#4)

• Look Around (#8)

• Dark Necessities (#1)

• Go Robot (#12)

Listen on Spotify here.

This is much, much more complete, and is probably the one I'd listen to. No misses from One Hot Minute, and the proper inclusions from Mother's Milk. ³ It even has "Dosed"! Perhaps it's too long, but in the age of streaming, that doesn't matter much anyway.

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And that leads me to my next thought. How does streaming effect the world of "greatest hits" packages? Do bands even release them anymore? Isn't a playlist essentially the same thing?

I use Spotify exclusively to listen to music. I don't buy CDs or records anymore.⁴ These days, if I want to get into a band, I just go to the introductory playlist that Spotify provides, or I pick a random album and go from there.

If streaming services are how people listen to music these days, does that mean they're the benchmark by how we define a successful song? Perhaps that can that even be extended historically -- to get the true measure of how popular a song is, find out who listens to it years and years after the fact, when there's no push from radio, no inflated figures because of a recent release.

Here are the top 15 Red Hot Chili Peppers tracks by their Spotify playcount, current to May 16, 2019:

• Under the Bridge (475,399,754)
• Californication (456,488,244)
• Snow (Hey Oh) (399,434,003)
• Can’t Stop (352,105,146)
• Otherside (306,367,120)
• Scar Tissue (243,090,042)
• Dani California (235,015,491)
• Dark Necessities (190,200,713)
• By the Way (147,716,541)
• Give It Away (113,923,339)
• The Zephyr Song (75,940,937)
• Rain Dance Maggie (62,276,023)
• Around the World (56,926,829)
• Road Trippin’ (53,366,450)

Listen on Spotify here.

A couple of surprises. "Dark Necessities" is so high because it was released recently, and "Rain Dance Maggie" is perhaps high for that reason as well, though Spotify wasn't such a big deal in August of 2011.

From a completely unscientific reading of how fans and crowds react to each song, and seeing how often they're discussed online, I'd dare say that "Dark Necessities" has become a "classic" among RHCP fans, and "Maggie" isn't - but maybe that's just me. Maybe time will tell.

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Are the days of the "Greatest Hits" releases over? If a record company can just promote a Spotify playlist over pushing a fleet of plastic CDs over the world, maybe they will. I had a look at recent releases from artists around the world, and there are no entries from 2018 or 2019. Maybe this is all for nothing; maybe there will be no post-2003 RHCP Greatest Hits.

Until next time,