Now That's What I Call Music! 67

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Mayer appears on Now 28 twice—on his own song “Say” and as the featured artist on a cursed cover of “Beat It” by Fall Out Boy that I had erased from my memory. Now 65, in particular, features a three-song run that paints a ghastly picture of recent popular rap, from G-Eazy’s “No Limit” to NF’s “Let You Down” to Post Malone’s “I Fall Apart. It also has a shocking amount of forgettable songs, like Aerosmith’s “Just Push Play,” “Caramel” by City High, and “Lights, Camera, Action!

We’re getting into the nitty gritty now, where every remaining Now has a valid argument for it being the best ever—just over 10 points separate Now 4 from the very top. Tracks with an asterisk (*) next to their title have also been included in special releases from the series.

The Now albums are remarkably more proficient at declaring what music is in the present, rather than attempting to determine what music will be in the future. Sample lyrics from “BareNaked”: “Sometimes I think I’m the only one/Whose day turned out unlike it had begun. The 4-CD series follows the same general format of the original Special Editions series, with genre, era, and decade collections, but over four compact discs (there is also an abridged vinyl version of Punk and New Wave and Rock), meaning they contain more tracks than the original special editions, but fewer than the Now 100 Hits, which preceded this series. It also doesn’t have any massive hits—“Closing Time” was the album’s longest-charting song at 37 weeks on the Hot 100—which is why this bizarre conglomeration of songs is ranked so low. In February 2023, 12" mixes all taken from the first three Now Dance compilations, originally released in 1985, 1986 and 1989, were collected on a special 4CD and 3LP set, Now Dance: The 80s, with artwork inspired by the original Now Dance 86.

Released in association with the Official Chart Company to "celebrate 70 years of the official UK singles chart". They are also notable as being the first time a Now series had released a compilation of hits from the years 1980 to 1982. Where the albums differ is in the aggregate quality of the music they contain—while all Now albums have definitively told us what music was in a given three-to-four-month span, they have never guaranteed that that music would be necessarily good. I’ve given myself to the power of the Now Formula, and I trust its ability to objectively determine the best Now.I picked “Cups” as the most essential song over Icona Pop’s “I Love It” and Justin Timberlake’s “Mirrors” because I need us all to never forget the odd state pop music has been in this decade. Now 43 is an inflection point in the Now nexus, capturing most of the artists either on the downslope of their careers or headed toward their apex.

Then there’s “It Wasn’t Me” by Shaggy, a song in which a man is caught literally having sex on the floor of a bathroom, and when that man asks Shaggy for advice, Shaggy just says, “Lie about it, bro.Certainly this song cemented Akron’s vocals within the music industry and he worked with many other artists soon afterwards. On the wrong side of the peak are artists like Usher (“Scream”), Maroon 5 (“Payphone”), and Ne-Yo (“Let’s Go”). Lest you think this was the only time Saving Abel appeared on a Now album—the 3 Doors Down–lite band was also on Now 29 with “Addicted,” a song whose uncensored hook is “I’m so addicted to all the things you do/When you’re going down on me in between the sheets. The first Now is a glorious, clear mission statement, perfectly encapsulating what music was in 1998. They all vary from one to five disc compilations (occasionally six disc), starting in 1986 and continuing to the present day (Jan 2023).