TURN IT ON AGAIN - THE HITS

Turn it On Again: The Hits is what it is: The Hits. It contains over 78 minutes of music, and even figuring a few seconds between tracks, it accounts for at least 98% of the capacity of a compact disk. (Compare that to Nursery Cryme, at 42:35.)

To me, the question is not whether Turn it On Again: The Hits contains the best of Genesis, but whether it accomplishes its goal of presenting "the hits," and if it does, the quality of those hits.

Genesis had twenty-two Billboard Hot 100 chart entries between 1977 and 1993. Fifteen of these are on Turn it On Again: The Hits, including the band's ten biggest hits. (The following hits are missing from Turn it On Again: The Hits: "Your Own Special Way," #62; "No Reply At All," #29; "Man on the Corner," #40, "Paperlate," #32; "Illegal Alien," #44, "Taking it All Too Hard," #50; and "Never a Time," #21.)

Meanwhile, Turn it On Again: The Hits has three songs that were not hits in the US, but represent the periods before and after the group's hitmaking days: "Congo," "Carpet Crawlers '99," and "I Know What I Like." So overall, this album does a pretty good job of presenting the hits on a single disk.

Now, what of the quality of these songs? About a third of the material ranges from pretty bad (e.g., "Throwing it All Away") to really bad ("Hold On My Heart," "In Too Deep"), and another third ranges from good ("Abacab") to great ("Misunderstanding," "Carpet Crawlers '99"). The remainder are OK, and among these I count "Land of Confusion," "That's All," "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight," and "Invisible Touch," none of which makes me switch stations if it comes on the radio.

Turn it On Again: The Hits is a greatest-hits album (whereas the three-disc Platinum Collection seems to be closer to a "best-of"), and while these hits aren't that great, they're not that bad either. The original reason to buy this CD was to get "Carpet Crawlers '99," but that's been available for individual download on itunes and Amazon for years - - which means that this isn't an essential purchase. I would, though, recommend it to anyone, including Gabriel- and Hackett-era Genesis fans interested in an overview of the band's 1980s and 1990s singles.