Published on Sep 19, 2000
An admission: Had I first bought
Now That’s What I Call Music 2 and discovered it was the
crater it is, I probably would never have dropped 12 bucks on
Now That’s What I Call Music 3 (hereafter referred to as
Now 3). Fortunately, I happened to pick up volumes two,
three and four in a mini-spending spree, so I had no idea how any
of the discs were.
After
Now 2 came in as a disappointment, the makers of this series
knew they had to come up with something that would blow the doors
off their hinges… or else this series would be as dead as the
tofu burgers sitting on their plates at lunch. Fortuantely for
them,
Now 3 is a step back in the right direction, though some
mistakes are still made.
The series still is depending on repeat visitors to its lineup –
acts such as Lenny Kravitz (“American Woman” – sorry, I still
prefer the Guess Who version), Garbage (“Special”) and Fastball
(“Out Of My Head”) all make second appearances… and, good grief,
the Backstreet Boys make their third appearance. I mean, yeah,
they’re popular and all, but come
on, guys, there have to be other acts which deserve some
compilation face time!
Problem number two is that the producers of these compilations
don’t seem to grasp the idea of spreading the genres out. There’s
so much top 40 banded together, followed by a block of r&b,
followed by an alternative block, yada yada yada. I would have
liked to have been presented with an album which scatters the
performances out. That way, it wouldn’t feel like a specific genre
was being singled out at a time.
Track-wise, the producers seemed to wake up and smell the
decaffienated coffee on
Now 3. There still are a few landmines out there, like
Fastball (why did they pick “Out Of My Head” over a song like “Fire
Escape”?), Chanté Moore (“Chanté’s Got A Man” –
sorry, just couldn’t get into this one) and Oleander (“Why I’m
Here” – hate to say it, but their 15 minutes of fame appear to be
up).
But there are some killer performances – and they outweigh the
negatives. I may be complaining about hearing Backstreet Boys on
three straight albums (and it won’t get better next week), but “All
I Have To Give” is so different sounding, you may not recognize
them. (I actually thought it was R. Kelly singing at first.) Smash
Mouth (“All Star”), Blink 182 (“What’s My Age Again?”), Limp Bizkit
(“Nookie”), Fatboy Slim (“The Rockafeller Skank”) and Ideal (“Get
Gone”) all shine, leaving no doubt why these songs are being
singled out.
Now 3 makes a nice recovery from the musical frisbee that
Now 2 almost became… but the crowning moment (at least
sales-wise) for the series would still be forthcoming. And next
week, we’ll look at
Now 4.