The 10 best ‘greatest hits’ albums of all time
No matter what genre you’re talking about, be it punk, hip-hop, rock, or anything else, the compilation album receives a lot of hate, but this seems a bit unfair.
I can understand why a lot of greatest hits records are met with disdain by the general public, as the majority of the time, when bands put these out, they do so in the hope of a quick cash grab, and as such, they can seem a bit disingenuous. Additionally, a lot of what makes some songs good isn’t just the tracks themselves, but the albums on which they exist, and a compilation album nullifies this.
That being said, while there are some negatives to a compilation here and there, you can’t say they don’t also come with their benefits. A lot of legendary bands have elongated discographies, and these can make it hard for new fans to know where to start. Additionally, some greatest hits compilations give effective insight into the lives and versatility of different bands and artists. Yes, they come with negatives attached, but to suggest that all greatest hits albums are terrible because of it seems a touch excessive.
Still not sure? Well, these are the ten greatest hits compilation albums which prove this kind of record can be effective when used in the right way, time and place.
The 10 best ‘greatest hits’ albums:
Queen – ‘Greatest Hits’
When The Beatles released Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, they completely revolutionised the way that people saw what an album could be. Its innovative nature meant that it quickly became the best-selling LP of all time. It doesn’t still hold that title, though, with the first band to knock such a genius piece of music from the top spot being, you guessed it, Queen and their Greatest Hits album.
The record’s success is a reflection of two things: Queen’s versatility and Queen’s quality. The fact that the band’s excellent range of music was suddenly available for all to listen to in one handy place meant that fans were lining the streets to buy what would become one of the most successful compilation albums of all time.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience – ‘Smash Hits’
Given how much people continue to talk about Jimi Hendrix, despite him passing over five decades ago, shows just how much of an impact the guitarist had, and while people often overlook just how short a period of time Hendrix spent as a mainstream artist, having only been in the spotlight for around four years, it stands to remind people how much of a driving force he was in the music industry.
Because of his short time in the public eye, there are a lot of songs from early parts in his career that are missed out on by fans. Additionally, his style never changed too drastically in this time, so a greatest hits compilation doesn’t sound too disjointed when you put it all together, which is where a lot of such albums fall down.
Ozzy Osbourne – ‘The Ozzman Cometh: Greatest Hits’
When Ozzy Osbourne passed away in 2025, the news resonated so deeply with music lovers that the entire industry seemed to stop in its tracks, and as tributes poured in, fans were forced to look back at his career, where it became abundantly clear just how much great, innovative and game-changing music he had put out during his life.
People took to streaming apps to create tribute playlists that consisted of his solo work, his music with Black Sabbath, and the collaborations he did with other artists; however, the making of such playlists was done in vain, as this great collection of songs already exists in the form of The Ozzman Cometh. This concoction of greatest hits isn’t just an ode to Ozzy Osbourne, but to heavy metal as a genre, as it becomes abundantly clear just how much of an impact the ‘Prince of Darkness’ truly had.
Nirvana – ‘Nirvana’
A bit similar to Hendrix, Nirvana were one of those bands that weren’t around for a long time, but their short stint in the limelight wound up shaping all of music moving forward. Even though the grunge genre’s time in the sun was short, you can hear those droning influences on the majority of rock music that comes out today, and Nirvana were a huge influence on this.
It’s hard to believe how much great music they wrote in such a short span of time, but the classics are there to be amazed by when you scan the tracklist of their self-titled greatest hits offering. As tracks like ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, ‘Come as You Are’ and ‘In Bloom’ sit alongside more reserved offerings from their MTV Unplugged set, it becomes clear just how much of an influence Nirvana had on lovers of rock and grunge everywhere.
Guns N’ Roses – ‘Greatest Hits’
When Guns N’ Roses released their debut album, Appetite for Destruction, their intention was simple: make a hard rock album that rebelled against hair metal. “I fucking hated the whole scene, man […] In Los Angeles, it was just bullshit. And we were coming up in the midst of all that,” said Slash, “Everybody was fucking converting to the industry standard to get a record deal and get girls, this whole thing. Where our band was coming from was the antithesis of all that, and it’s something I’m really proud of.”
Of course, while their first album revolved around an unwavering hard rock sound, as the band progressed and worked on records such as Use Your Illusion I and II, they branched out into various genres. Their Greatest Hits record is great because you can hear this evolution really clearly, as an angry bunch of budding rockers adjust their approach to creation in the face of success.
Sly & The Family Stone – ‘The Essential Sly & The Family Stone’
The trajectory of Sly & The Family Stone is something that music lovers have spent years studying, including Questlove, who was given the task of putting his creative and personal life into a documentary, where it didn’t take long for The Roots drummer to realise just how difficult a task that was.
“Sly’s story is everybody’s story,” he said, “He is the first Black celebrity of the post civil rights era. His success was different from Chuck Berry’s or Ray Charles’, the acts that couldn’t stay in the hotels or eat in the restaurants where they played. The question is: what happens when you get everything you want?”
What happens, at least in a musical sense anyway, is that your style changes pretty drastically. When you compare the massive differences between his early work, which was a collaborative effort that celebrated everything unifying about funk, to his later efforts with There’s a Riot Goin’ On, a record written in isolation, the differences are undeniable. You need a greatest hits album to truly appreciate such changes, and that’s what you get with The Essential Sly & The Family Stone.
The Beatles – ‘Red Album’ & ‘Blue Album’
How do you ever condense the legacy of The Beatles into something as simple as a greatest hits album? You don’t, because you condense it into two. The Red and Blue albums of the band take the best songs from different portions of their trajectory and put them on full display for all music lovers to hear, wherein it becomes clear when listening to these records just how much The Beatles changed during what was a relatively short run together.
When you listen to their upbeat pop tracks, which originally propelled them to fame, such as ‘She Loves You’ and ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, and compare them to later offerings like ‘A Day In The Life’ and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, the amount that the band evolved is truly astonishing. It was this willingness to change that made it so The Beatles weren’t just big for the time, but their music has continued to live on in the hearts of listeners far and wide.
ABBA – ‘Gold: Greatest Hits’
Despite ABBA’s success, it would be a stretch to suggest that the band evolved a great deal sonically throughout their career. This lack of change isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as if you have a sound that works, then why not run with it? It also means that one of the best albums in the group’s collection is a greatest hits compilation.
A lot of the time, you listen to a band’s album as one definitive piece of music, as it covers a very specific era and tells a story from beginning to end. You don’t necessarily get that with ABBA, so by listening to Gold, you get the very best of the band, but it doesn’t sound too haphazard either. A lot of greatest hits albums are terrible because they break up the original album that tracks made up, but sometimes, like with these disco pioneers, a compilation heightens their music a great deal.
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – ‘So Far…’
Members of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were already successful before the band got together, and so they didn’t worry about commercial success too much when writing songs. “We had already had some success. You know, The Hollies had had more hits than we’ve ever had, already, for [Graham] Nash,” said David Crosby when discussing the members’ prior success, “Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds have had a good running […] So it wasn’t the launch point for us, you know, really. It was the launch point for CSN.”
Because the band had quite a free approach to music when they started working on Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, despite a few tracks, it’s hard to definitely say what their greatest hits are. Their album So Far… makes for a good listen because it’s what the members deem to be their greatest songs, so you get real insight into the minds of these musicians with an excellent greatest hits record like this.
AC/DC – ‘Who Made Who’
OK, it’s not technically a greatest hits record, but let’s be real, it is, though. When Stephen King was making the movie Maximum Overdrive, he asked AC/DC if they would put together a compilation album and write the soundtrack for his film, which left the Australian rockers worried about putting together a greatest hits record, as they didn’t believe in reusing material like that. As such, they wrote a brand new song, ‘Who Made Who’, so that fans would still get some new music if they bought this compilation. The record was full of some of AC/DC’s best work, and ‘Who Made Who’ became an instant classic.
Murray Engleheart commented on how much the release of this compilation helped the band reignite the public’s passion for them. “It was their biggest single in years, their most successful single in years, and it just had everything; it was the classic AC/DC sound,” he said, “The tension build-up at the beginning, the big chorus, the rhythmic stride, it just had everything.”
