With the reassuring, white-suited images of John Travolta and the three Brothers Gibb, the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack album -- part Bee Gees, part best-of-disco compilation -- became the all-time best-selling album until Michael Jackson's "Thriller" came along in 1982.
In Japan, Spears' compilation became her first album to top the Oricon charts selling 173,145 copies, and finished as the 38th best-selling album of 2004 and the 40th of 2005.
As Muhammad, who was illiterate, recited new passages, believers wrote them down: a compilation that became the Koran.
The planned Harrison greatest-hits compilation then became an experiment by Capitol whereby Beatles tracks were mixed with solo hits on the one album.
That's the question a skeptic might reasonably ask at the recent announcement of a new version of the group's 2000 "1" hits compilation that became the biggest-selling album of the decade, the new edition being packaged with performance footage and films for each of the Fab Four's 27 No. 1 hits on the album.
However, usual compilation techniques do not adapt well to non-orthogonal architectures and the compiler design becomes much more difficult due to the complexity of these architectures.
Putting out provocative compilations has become the Idelsohn Society's stock in trade.
Gus Joannides, owner of Sound City, a rap-centric record shop in Queens, said that the cloud over the compilations had become one more hassle for independent retailers, who are already straining to stay afloat in the ailing music business.
But then something happened among the high-earning metropolitan elite: that idea of ultra-smooth sexuality, skinny ties, scooters, and chillout compilations suddenly became old hat.
