"Now That's What I Call Music!": 35 Years On, What Has This Compilation Witnessed in Music and Society?

Who becomes a star is, in some mysterious way, already decided.

Thirty-five years ago, when the compilation album Now That's What I Call Music! (Now, for short) first appeared, probably no one foresaw that it would become an enduring brand. Today the series, which puts out three volumes a year, has reached its 100th installment.

The compilation format wasn't Now's invention, and plenty of imitators followed in its wake, but Now achieved a success no other compilation could match. Over 35 years, this series of chart-topping hits has sold 120 million copies in the UK. Counting the 100th volume, released at the end of last month, 99 of the series' 100 albums have reached No. 1 on the UK pop singles chart.

When the first volume came out in the UK on November 28, 1983, music still belonged to the vinyl era. As formats changed, Now took the shape of cassettes, CDs and streaming playlists too, and the double CD became its signature form. Even now, in the age of streaming, you can still find Now CDs on store shelves — and they sell quite well.

The first disc of Now 100 gathers hit singles from the past few months by artists like Calvin Harris, Dua Lipa and Ariana Grande; the second disc is made up of hits from across the past 35 years.

Now stands for more than music. What the compilation picks, and how those picks have shifted, reflects something of the state of the British music scene and even of British society. Now collects hit songs from the pop charts, which means pop dominates the compilation, but over 35 years different sounds have found particular favor in particular periods — New Wave in the 1980s, say, or Britpop in the 1990s.

So there is plenty to ask about this compilation. How has the sound people like best changed over the years? Why did those sounds appear? And what ties do these melodies have to the society around them?

A Second "British Invasion" and a Mature Market Let Now Find Its Footing Fast

Now arrived at a lively moment for British music.

"At a time when people were talking about a second British Invasion, the powerhouse partnership between Virgin and EMI gave the Now series a real boost," said Steve Pritchard, who runs the Now series, in an interview with Billboard.

"British Invasion" describes a moment when British pop culture is booming — booming enough to reach the United States across the Atlantic. In the 1960s the Beatles, from Liverpool, led the first British Invasion. By the late 1970s the cultural wave had shifted from the rock of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to the punk of the Sex Pistols and the Clash.

Zhang Tiezhi writes in Sound and Fury (《声音与愤怒》) that although the word "punk" came from America, it was Britain's musical and social context that turned punk into a movement. In the mid-to-late 1970s Britain's economy was in decline and unemployment was high. Between 1974 and 1977, unemployment rose 120 percent, and youth unemployment by as much as 200 percent. In 1976 Notting Hill saw postwar Britain's worst race riot, with fierce clashes between Black youths and the police.

Against that backdrop, people needed a way to vent their discontent, and punk became their choice. Like the first British Invasion, the second was anti-mainstream and anti-establishment — if anything, more so. The Sex Pistols turned their demand for anarchy straight into a song title ("Anarchy in the UK"), and punk even took aim at rock itself, because rock by then had drifted away from young people's lives and thrown itself into commerce. "In 1977, no Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones," the Clash shouted in "1977."

That may have annoyed the punks, but there is no denying that Britain's music business was in good shape in the 1980s, and that helped the music spread. Virgin Records had plenty of artists whose work sold well. Besides their own albums, their songs turned up on various hits compilations, which sold well too. Watching other companies make money off its own artists, Virgin decided to keep the money in the family: it brought in EMI and started planning a compilation business of its own.

It was a smart decision. Now, named after the bacon advertising poster that inspired it, quickly became a hot property. Now 1, released in November 1983, spent a month at the top of the UK pop chart. The compilation, which featured Virgin's own artists such as Phil Collins, UB40 and Culture Club, eventually sold 900,000 copies.

Shifting Musical Trends and the Society Behind Them

By the time Now 1's vinyl reached the shelves, the fierce punk wave had faded and a kind of rock called New Wave was in fashion.

New Wave and punk both appeared in the mid-to-late 1970s, and were at one point treated as the same thing. Stylistically, New Wave pulled together many kinds of music — electronic, reggae, dance. Its catchy melodies made it more commercial and more popular, which gradually set it apart from punk.

The Now series of the 1980s was full of New Wave bands, and Duran Duran, who folded in disco, were the prime example. Duran Duran stood for more than a sound; they stood for a way of life. In London at the time, underground clubs were awash in a movement called "Futurism/New Romanticism," and at night on the streets you would often see groups of boys wearing makeup, headbands, wide-brimmed hats and ruffled, clown-like outfits. Duran Duran led this New Wave scene.

The band members' good looks and flamboyant stage manner also suited what the MTV era demanded of the eye. Shooting music videos, the band — named after a villain in a French science-fiction film — tried to bring in the feel of cinema: they shot on 35mm film and hired professional film directors. With the help of music videos, New Wave artists led by Duran Duran won worldwide influence.

By the 1990s, the mainstreaming of electronic rave music pulled Britain back into the protest mood of the punk years. Unlike punk's anger, the theme of this era of protest was hedonistic partying. In the "Reclaim the Streets" movement, for instance, people demanded that streets be freed from cars and returned to the public — and their method of protest was to throw parties in the street.

"In the world of rave, people are not watching a star perform. On one hand it takes back individual rights, and on the other it brings everyone into a democratic space together," Sound and Fury says.

Now 30, released in 1995, was made up almost entirely of electronic dance music, which to some extent reflected the public mood of the time. In the end, though, rave did not escape being absorbed and constrained by commerce, and because its urge to build a carnival utopia outweighed any real drive to change the world, its protest character gradually went out.

Britpop and Cool Britannia: A Bright Chapter in the Story of Music and Its Times

In May 1997, Britain's Labour Party finally beat the Conservatives, who had governed for 18 years. Britain's rock world was overjoyed. Labour and rock — especially the Britpop that rose in the 1990s — had a way of making each other.

Britpop drew on Britain's guitar pop bands of the 1960s and 1970s and became a major force in British indie rock in the 1990s. Many members of the leading Britpop bands came from working-class families, so supporting Labour was natural. Labour, in turn, tried to use Britpop to build momentum at election time. On one poster, Oasis and Blur, Britpop's two sworn rivals, stared each other down above the line: "The only thing we hate more than each other is the Conservatives." After taking office, Tony Blair invited Oasis to his inauguration party.

In the 1990s, Manchester's Oasis, London's Blur and Suede, and Sheffield's Pulp made up Britpop's "big four." Their melodies carried on Britain's older guitar pop while weaving in themes tied to Britishness. Oasis's Noel Gallagher, with his Union Jack guitar, was the best expression of the Britpop spirit.

While it was speaking up about the world outside, Britpop was just as noisy inside. The tug-of-war between Oasis and Blur, running from the music into their private lives, became an important footnote to Britpop's golden age. Musically the two went head to head: Oasis's single "Roll with It" and Blur's "Country House" came out on the same day. And the standoff between these two bands of different backgrounds was also read as a fight between classes and regions — Manchester's Oasis stood for the working class of northern England, London's Blur for the middle class of the south.

Seen more broadly, it was not only music that was lively in 1990s Britain; the whole culture and fashion world was flourishing. Trainspotting, a film that caught the subcultural spirit of Britain's young generation, was argued over around the world; young designers such as Alexander McQueen made their names in fashion; and even the sharp-edged publications covering those industries — the music magazine NME, for one — had their moment.

It was in this optimistic mood that the phrase "Cool Britannia" spread. In 1996, Newsweek introduced London in an article called "The Coolest Capital on Earth." In 1997, Vanity Fair ran a "Cool Britannia" feature, putting Oasis's Liam Gallagher and his then-wife, the actress and singer Patsy Kensit, on the cover.

The optimism did not last long. Less than a year into Tony Blair's premiership, NME put him on the cover again — this time not to celebrate but to question. Across his forehead, in huge type: "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" Labour's "Third Way," positioned between laissez-faire capitalism and traditional socialism, drew condemnation from the music world. Many bands were unhappy with the new government's strict conditions for unemployment benefits, and disappointed by its refusal to discuss legalizing drugs and by its cuts to higher-education funding.

Britpop and Cool Britannia gradually faded, and pop groups led by the Spice Girls became the new trend. As with rave before it, Britpop did not lack musical heirs. But the kind of lively cultural soil that the 1990s had has been hard to grow again. That has made the Britpop era a stretch of years the British look back on with affection. Now, with Oasis broken up, McQueen dead and NME's print edition shut down, that feeling is probably especially strong.

Robbie Williams Is Now's Favorite Singer, and Rihanna Isn't Far Behind

Robbie Williams, who raised his middle finger during his performance at this year's World Cup opening ceremony in Russia, is the singer Now has favored most. Thirty of his singles have appeared on Now compilations, a number no one else has matched.

Music's turn toward entertainment, and its pairing with visual media, made idol groups hugely popular with young people in the 1990s. The period threw up plenty of boy bands and girl groups singing about love, from Boyzone with "No Matter What" to Eternal with "Oh Baby I...," and later the Spice Girls, who became a household name. Take That, fronted by Robbie Williams, is regarded as the ancestor of these idol groups. Williams performed in public at eight, joined Take That at 16, and went on to enormous success with the band.

Unwilling to follow the rules, Williams parted ways with Take That. The change of direction was not smooth, but the "bad boy" did complete his shift from teen idol to serious musician, and found success on his own. His music grew harder, with elements of Britpop in it.

Beyond the records, Williams's drinking and drug use, his romance with the American actress Ayda Field, and his reunion with Take That gave the press plenty to fill its pages with — and eventually the gossip outshone the music itself.

If Williams offers a model of longevity, Rihanna, from the United States, captured British hearts in a much shorter time. She has 27 songs in the Now series, second only to Williams.

A recognizable voice, the occasional earworm, an active presence on social media, and an unembarrassed display of sex — in videos, in daily life, on the red carpet — led The Guardian to call her the ultimate pop star of the 21st century.

Measured along the timeline, Ireland's U2 is the act with the longest run in Now. U2 had a song included the year after the series began, and in 2018 their work still appears on it.

Ever since Live Aid, the 1985 mega-concert that raised money for the Ethiopian famine, U2 has been a symbol of social engagement. In 2005 came Live 8, staged to wake up public political awareness, with U2 again at its center. That year, U2's singer Bono and Bill and Melinda Gates were named Time magazine's Persons of the Year. U2 also won Amnesty International's Ambassador of Conscience Award.

So How Has Now, as a Compilation, Stayed Evergreen?

The compilation format was not Now's invention.

As early as 1966, the Canadian company K-Tel released the compilation 25 Country Hits. As the story goes, however many copies they made, they sold. In the 1980s, K-Tel compilation series such as Dynamic Hits, Power Hits and Greatest Hits still did well. But to fit as many songs as possible onto a record, K-Tel edited songs down to save time.

"One thing Now has always been clear about is that it will never edit songs," Steve Pritchard, who runs the series, told the BBC.

A year after Now went on sale, Sony and Warner responded quickly with their own compilation series, Hits. Compared with Now, Hits leaned toward big American names such as Prince and Madonna — the latter has never appeared in a standard Now volume. That let Hits hold its own against Now early on. Of the 100 volumes in the Now series, only Now 4 has failed to reach No. 1. What outshone it at the time was a volume of Hits.

When Hits began to slide a few years later, its owners tried to rebrand it, including changing the name. In the long run none of that helped Hits; it only weakened the brand recognition it had built. Hits came to an end in 2006.

Now had a "midlife crisis" of its own. Label executives worried at one point that as the volumes piled up, the ever-larger number after "Now" would make the brand feel old. In the end Now kept the numbering, and the numbers became one of its most valuable assets, because they gave the brand a sense of history and stirred up nostalgia.

"Not many entertainment brands can do that, and in music even fewer can bridge the generation gap," Pete Duckworth, another executive behind the series, told Billboard. "It's a bit like Star Wars. Episode I, II and III came out in the late 1990s, and part of their success was that mums and dads took their kids to the cinema to see a series they had loved as children themselves."

Now 44, released in November 1999, set the series' UK sales record at 2.3 million copies. It included Britney Spears's "...Baby One More Time," Robbie Williams's "She's the One" and other songs.

On Now 44's success, Pete Duckworth said: "Everyone bought a copy for the millennium party that was coming, and there was very little competition around at the time. People seemed to think the world — or at least the online world — would grind to a halt when the millennium arrived."

Not long after it was born, Now began to extend itself, by brand and by geography. Today the series has special volumes by genre, such as "Country" and "Jazz," and by period, such as a "'60s" edition. Though it started in Britain, Now's footprint now covers the world: it launched in South Africa in 1984, entered Asia in 1995, and broke into the US market in 1998...

Compared with 30 years ago, the way people listen to music has changed. As it happens, Now's compilation format fits the playlist, the form that rose with streaming. That is part of why Now is still popular.

"Why is radio still successful? Because not everyone wants to make their own playlists," said Jon Webster, a former marketing director at Virgin Records. "A lot of the time they want someone to say to them, 'Listen to this.' They're passive listeners — but there are a lot of them."

There really are a lot of them: in 2016, Now 95 outsold Adele's 25 in the UK. And Now seems to have a longer road ahead of it still. A week after its release, Now 100 reached No. 1 on the UK pop chart and became the fastest-selling album of 2018.

Graphic: Zheng Shuya

Cover image: Wiki Commons