Search - Various Artists :: Billboard Top Hits 1994

Billboard's collections are MAJOR disappointments

Donna Di Giacomo | Philadelphia, PA | 07/23/2005

(1 out of 5 stars)

"One would think that with Billboard's reputation as *the* music magazine of record that they would put more thought into their compilations and offer the public music that they actually liked and was popular back in the day instead of songs that no one ever heard of.



They really hit rock bottom with their compilations from the 1990's. Not only that but they put 8 songs on the audio tapes, thereby forcing people to shell out a few bucks more for the CD to get the full 10 song set (and the majority of the tunes are filler material).



The magazine should have gotten someone who was familiar with the music of the 1990's instead of Joel Whitburn - whose specialty is music of the 50's to the 80's. Most of the selections for this compliation are songs I never heard on the radio at all during that time (unless they were being played at 3 or 4 in the morning): Big Mountain's (whoever they were) remake of "Baby I Love Your Way," Tevin Campbell's "Can We Talk?" and Richard Marx's "Now and Forever" were not given heavy airplay in 1994 so why they were included here, I'll never know.



Billboard missed the boat with the 1990's. So many good (and well-known) songs were overlooked for various years: Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U" just about ruled the charts in 1990, The Cranberries' "Linger" was overlooked for 1993 (even though that was another one that got heavy radio airplay and was pretty high on the Billboard charts), Toad the Wet Sprocket's "Walk on the Ocean," Michael Bolton's "Said I Loved You...But I Lied" (just about anything he did during the 90's was sure to be a chart topper), Seal's "Crazy," Des'ree's "You Gotta Be," Enigma's "Return to Innocence," even one hit wonder Timmy T's "One More Try," and many, many more were overlooked.



This compliation is supposed to give people a pretty good overview of the music scene in 1994 and nothing could be farther from the way things were back then.



If you want good compliations, Entertainment Weekly offers really good ones. They have more songs, are roughly the same price as Billboard's (maybe a buck or two more) but, guarantee, you'll know the majority of those songs.



Major thumbs down."