Peter Gabriel - Hit
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Music CD Cover Artist: Peter Gabriel Edition: Music CD Format: Original recording remastered CD Release Date: 2003-11-04 Music Label: Geffen Records Soundtracks: Music CD 1
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Free Music Notes for Hit Album
Free Music Review: Great artist... frustrating compilation
Hit: 2 Stars
HIT sounds exactly like what it is - a thrown-together collection of songs designed to fulfill PG's contract with Geffen, with no real thought or care going into the project. A 2-disc set of PG's work sounds like a winning idea, but this collection could have been so much better! As it is, HIT is vastly inferior to the single-disc SHAKING THE TREE: 16 GOLDEN GREATS released in 1990. For starters, the track selection and sequencing on HIT seem to have been done completely at random. There is no logical flow from one song to the other. By stark contrast, the songs on SHAKING THE TREE fit seamlessly together to offer a well-rounded perspective on Gabriel's career (to that point, anyway).It is an utter travesty that a set labeling itself as "The Ultimate 2-CD Collection" completely ignores Gabriel's masterwork, "Passion." You remember "Passion," don't you? The Grammy-winning, critically-acclaimed, universally-appreciated, ground-breaking album that ushered in the world fusion movement and launched the Real World Records label? There's nary a sign that it even exists here. Why couldn't they have replaced some of the MANY songs from UP with "Zaar" (which was included on SHAKING THE TREE) or "Different Drum" (which appears on the EU edition of HIT)? It's a shame.
As for Gabriel's latest studio album UP, it was released scarcely a year ago and yet five songs - a full HALF of the entire album - appear on HIT. Why? I can only imagine the reasoning of the execs at Geffen: "Hey, nobody here in the U.S. bought UP anyway, so let's put a bunch of songs from it on HIT, alongside `Sledgehammer' and `Shock the Monkey,' of course, and hope that listeners will be intrigued enough to finally go out and get the album!"
There are some GOOD things about HIT, however, most of which have to do with the second disc. Songs from OVO are surprisingly well represented (although a different version of "Downside Up" would have been nice, as the live recording here sounds murky and tampered-with). The Steve Osborne mix of "The Tower" and the Daniel Lanois-produced "Lovetown" (from the PHILADELPHIA soundtrack) are certainly welcome additions. Disc 2 is mysteriously titled MISS, which seems odd considering it contains "In Your Eyes," one of PG's most well-known songs.
Here, in my opinion, is how HIT could be easily fixed:
CD01 (just put `em in chronological order)
1. Solsbury Hill
2. Games Without Frontiers
3. Biko
4. Shock the Monkey
5. Sledgehammer [video version as heard on SHAKING THE TREE]
6. Don't Give Up (Edit)
7. Big Time
8. Red Rain
9. A Different Drum
10. Here Comes the Flood [piano version]
11. Digging in the Dirt
12. Blood of Eden ["Until the End of the World" soundtrack mix]
13. Growing Up (TLA mix)
14. More Than This (Edit)
15. Burn You Up, Burn You Down
CD02
1. San Jacinto
2. I Don't Remember
3. Zaar
4. Love to be Loved
5. While the Earth Sleeps [w/Deep Forest]
6. Family Snapshot
7. In Your Eyes ["Say Anything" single mix, for a little variety]
8. When You're Falling [w/ Afro Celt Sound System]
9. The Tower That Ate People (Steve Osborne mix)
10. Lovetown
11. Father, Son
12. Quiet Steam
13. Downside Up [either the instrumental or a new studio version with PG on vox]
14. Cloudless