Classics (1987)
1.Babe
2.Blue Collar Man
3.Come Sail Away
4.Crystal Ball
5.Fooling Yourself
6.Light Up
7.Mr. Roboto
8.Renegade
9.The Best of Times
10.Don't Let It End
11.The Grand Illusion
12.Suite Madame Blue
13.Too Much Time On My Hands
14.Miss America
If ever there was a case of a release being swiftly rendered obsolete by time and technology, Classics (Volume 15) is it. Issued in 1987 as part of A&M Records’ 25th anniversary celebration, this modest compilation offered listeners a tidy, if imperfect, summation of Styx’s commercial heyday. The band itself was in semi-retirement at the time, and the label, now deep into its silver jubilee festivities, took the opportunity to release greatest hits packages for several of its marquee artists. Styx, naturally, made the cut.
The arrival of the compact disc was still something of a novelty then, and the compilation likely served a dual purpose: to reintroduce Styx to a new format while giving longtime fans a way to revisit familiar tracks without repurchasing entire albums. It was, by 1987 standards, a welcome offering. But the shadow of latter compilations would loom large.
When Styx released Greatest Hits in 1995, Classics was all but forgotten. The newer release was digitally remastered (a term that meant as much or as little as one wanted it to at the time), and featured a few critical corrections. Most notably, it included Show Me the Way—a post-1983 hit that proved Styx still had gas in the tank, even if the tank was running on a slightly different grade. It also, crucially, managed to include Lady, the breakout ballad from their early Wooden Nickel days, which had been conspicuously absent from Classics due to licensing hurdles. Without Lady, any Styx “greatest hits” album feels somewhat neutered.
Track selection on Classics is mostly competent, but not without quirks. Light Up is given a slot over the more widely revered Lorelei (both from Equinox), a choice many have chalked up to either clerical error or plain oversight. The live version of Miss America is used in place of the studio cut, which might be either a bonus or a misstep depending on one’s tolerance for crowd noise and concert polish. And most baffling of all, Come Sail Away—arguably the band’s defining anthem—has about 30 seconds unceremoniously lopped off the end. No explanation has ever been offered. One assumes tape space, but it’s hard not to feel the loss.
As with many such collections, Classics now occupies a peculiar space. For completists, it’s a quaint artifact of its era—one of many labels’ attempts to retrofit analog-era giants into the digital age. For everyone else, it's largely redundant. Still, at the time of its release, it was a genuine treat. The compact disc format itself was enough of a novelty that even a mildly flawed retrospective like this one carried a certain excitement. And though A&M may have dipped back into the well a few too many times with later, cheesier compilations, this one at least came with a sense of occasion.
Exploitation? Perhaps. But if it was, it was done with velvet gloves and decent mastering.
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