‘Now!’ compilations are deeply uncool – but they’ve been the soundtrack to my life

As the legendary album series reaches its 40th anniversary, Paddy O’Connell says it’s time music fans dropped the snobbery about ‘various artists’ compilations – for Gen X-ers like me, they were a lifesaver

The ‘Now That’s What I Call Music!’ series got its name from an 1930s poster for Danish bacon (Virgin/EMI)

If you’re old enough to remember when the first Now That’s What I Call Music! compilation was released 40 years ago, you’ll surely also remember the curious ad campaign that went with it, involving a cartoon pig in headphones.

The story goes that the music men at Virgin Records were struggling to come up with a catchy title for their ground-breaking, two-disc hits collection that contained 30 of the hottest songs of the day (“…and 11 number ones!”). One of them spotted an old advert for Danish bacon and eggs featuring a chicken singing as a pig listens over the fence. The caption reads: “Now that’s what I call music!”

Not only am I’m old enough to remember the launch of Now! (the clunky name was eventually abbreviated when it became a series that, somehow, is still going today, but without the exclamation mark…), I was an instant devotee. As this was the heyday of the Walkman, I didn’t go for the vinyl version – I bought the double cassette.

Now, at the age of 17, I was probably way too old to be buying a pop compilation, especially one that opened with Phil Collins’s “You Can’t Hurry Love”. At school, we’d already had The Clash, Joy Division, The Police, Bowie and Blondie. I swear my friend Ted loved a band called You’ve Got Foetus On Your Breath.

But the 1980s was such a musical minefield, a bunch of schoolgirls had a Christmas number one with “There’s No One Quite Like Grandma” just months after “My Perfect Cousin” from The Undertones hit the top 10.

Teenagers like me were meant to rely on radio DJs like John Peel and inky tips from NME for their musical inspiration. But I had always been hooked on compilation albums. They were cheap, they were cheerful, they were deeply uncool.

Long before Spotify playlists, there were vinyl albums and cassettes containing all the recent hits. With one release on budget labels like Ronco, Arcade and Warwick, you could have some of the hits of the day in one place, rather than use up your pocket money buying individual 7-inch singles. But the problem was, thanks to the vagaries of music licensing, you could never have all of the hits. The Now series broke the mould by being supported by Britain’s biggest record companies of the day for the first time.

One of the joys of British pop music is that it’s so world-famous, you can spend all your time as a teenager despairing you might not be liking the right bit of it. Even before the advent of Now, budget, single-disc hits compilations were a lifesaver.

My first bumper banger bundle was K-Tel’s Disco Fever, which was released in 1977, the year of the Sex Pistols’ “God Save The Queen”. More pertinently, I think, it was a time when trousers were so tight, you could check the change in the pockets as heads or tails.

On Disco Fever, I can still recall the entire dream-making, memory-shaking line-up of tambourine-slapping original artists with cumulonimbus hair, raining hairspray. There was Hot Chocolate, Brotherhood of Man, Boomtown Rats, Billy Ocean, Gladys Knight and many more. Even old David Soul was on there, the cardiganned one from Starsky and Hutch. It was advertised on television (and embossed with an ‘As Seen on TV!’ sticker to prove it) and sold in Woolworths.

So time-travel with me in my tune Tardis fully six years later when Now That’s What I Call Music! landed on the shelves. Naturally, dear reader, I married one.

In front of me now, I still have the same Panasonic radio cassette player into which I slotted the plastic power package. Out of the wide-sound ambient stereo speakers came the hits of Duran Duran, Culture Club (twice!), Kajagoogoo, Malcolm McLaren, and many more. Pressed up somewhere among The Cure, Genesis and Rock Steady Crew was “Give It Up” by KC and the Sunshine Band.

I played this double cassette everywhere, most often in the Blaupunkt of my second-hand Mk 2 VW Golf, as I hurtled at 70 miles per hour towards the radio station where I worked. The sunshine band blared as the sun set over Colchester until, a few years later, the tape’s tiny ribbon was masticated somewhere along the A12.

There is a message in all of this somewhere. A great ‘various artists’ compilation reaches millions of us and spreads new music to the masses. Now 116, out next month, has a tracklist as eclectic as ever, including Calvin Harris, Stormzy, Billie Eilish… and Agnetha from Abba. But isn’t this what a great radio station should do, too?

As Now reaches its 40th anniversary and the old pig and chicken story is dusted off again, I‘m happy to confess how glad and grateful I am to the likes of Now!, to K-Tel, to Ronco, to Woolworths and all the rest. It’s time we switched off the snobbery about compilation albums – or as KC might say: “Na na na na na na na na na na na… baby, give it up.” Now that’s what I call music.

Paddy O’Connell presents ‘Broadcasting House’ on Sundays at 9am on BBC Radio 4, and Weekend Newscast on BBC Sounds