Will you look at that? Another year is here and half over, which must mean it's time for yet another greatest hits collection from The Culture Club. Seriously, how many greatest hits collections can one band pump out in their career? Whether you know the answer to that question or not, The Culture Club is bound and determined to find that out for you.
At last count, I hit somewhere around eleven (give or take) "greatest hits" collections of some sort in the form of box sets, the first four years, golden hits, or what have you. It kind of reminds me of Modern English trying to make a career out of "I'll Melt with You." I guess they kind of succeeded. To be fair though, this is the first time The Culture Club has released a greatest hits collection spanning their entire career, complete with a DVD of all their music videos.
Whether you're a fan of the Club or not, you can't deny the impact they had on the whole 80's alternative pop scene, at one time being the most popular music group in the entire world after their first two albums Kissing To Be Clever and Colour By Numbers were released. Not since the Beatles had any musical group had three top ten Billboard chart singles with their debut album. Not too shabby. Thinking about it makes me almost pee my nostalgic pants at the thought of watching Friday Night Video's in my pair of parachute khakis and fishnet t-shirt and blushing at the way Boy George dressed. How ironic that I'm now the one doing the blushing thinking about how I must have looked laying there in my alt-80's rags. What comes around goes around I suppose. I digress.
Everything you remember-and a lot of what you don't-is here, including ever popular hits like "Time (Clock of the Heart)", "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me" (which will never be the same after seeing The Wedding Singer), "I'll Tumble 4 Ya.", and of course the number one transatlantic smash "Karma Chameleon.", which sold over 5 million copies worldwide. Tried and true gems like "Church of the Poison Mind" and "Miss Me Blind" are present, as well as the anti-climatic and anti-war theme "The War Song", which has just as much or more relevance now than it ever did in the 80's.
Some of the slower, less known tracks are certainly showing their age, but have definitely survived the test of time, and as a whole this collection works rather well. It's hard to imagine generations of kids not knowing who The Culture Club is, or being introduced to them via a movie like The Wedding Singer, but by chance your one of them, I can highly recommend this collection as a primer to The Culture Club and to the wonderful sound that was the alternative 80's-and beyond. To the rest of us: sure, what will one more "greatest hits" collection by The Culture Club hurt? You owe it to yourself to give a little something more to a band that gave you so much. Or something.
