Lifetimes' achievement

As Greatest Hits albums sweep over the Christmas charts, Garry Mulholland asks if they are 24-carat gold or cynical music industry marketing

Christmas brings many things, year upon year. Arguments about whose relatives get visited this time. Long, "special' versions of your fave sitcoms that are never funny. And Greatest Hits albums. While some more traditional hosts will insist on playing Christmas carols, or maybe torturing themselves and everyone else with Now That's What I Call a Banal Xmas Bag o' Rubbish, chances are that most will be rocking the house with their freshly unwrapped copies of Elvis's 30 #1 Hits, Sir Elton's Greatest Hits 1970-2002, Westlife's Unbreakable – The Greatest Hits (nice of the boys to provide a warranty in the title) or the Rolling Stones' Forty Licks. Because, after a year of chucking thrilling new corporate wannabes at us, the music biz does, in the end, makes its money this way. At least, that's the theory.

There has been a deluge of high-profile "Best of" compilations in the past few months, but I didn't pick the four titles above at random. They are the only Best ofs in this week's Top 20 UK albums. Notably absent are heavily hyped comps from Nirvana, David Bowie, U2, The Manic Street Preachers, Pulp, The Stone Roses and The Who, who appear to have a Greatest Hits every year. Indeed, those various seminal artists' best shots are being outperformed by Russell Watson and S Club Juniors. Nevertheless, Best ofs proliferate, as the struggling rock behemoths are joined by Everything but the Girl, The Lighthouse Family, Ash, Teenage Fanclub, Blondie, Edwyn Collins and The Cowboy Junkies in the race for your Christmas dollar.

But, before you assault me with a battered copy of Status Quo's Twelve Gold Bars, any cynicism implied is not at the expense of the greatest Greatest Hits albums. Exhibit A for the defence is a slightly dog-eared vinyl album from Christmas 1977. Greatest Hits by Roxy Music is simply but beautifully dressed in a sleeve that depicts a gold disc with an intimidating model glaring from the label's edge, beside a list of the tracks. It contains just 11 songs, only four of which were even released as singles in the UK. But they didn't have to be actual hits, because they were a perfect introduction to the high-camp art-sleaze merchants that became one of my favourite bands ever. Twenty-five years later, after I've bought all Bryan Ferry and co's albums and a luscious CD box set with everything on it, it's still my fave Roxy record. It will never leave my side, because it reminds me, when such a reminder is necessary, of when this pop-music thing was still new and scary and almost unbearably thrilling to me, and why I want still to feel like that about pop. That's what a great Greatest Hits can do.

So, what are the chances of one of this year's flood becoming so important to someone? For what it's worth, CD1 of the Stones' Forty Licks is so awesome that even the recent self-parodic horror stuff on CD2 cannot dim its light; hearing all Pulp's post-"Babies" singles in a row is a revelation; and Like the Deserts Miss the Rain does what a Best of is supposed to do – it makes someone who never thought Everything but the Girl were much cop realise that they weren't listening properly. But, subjectivity aside, the real questions are: what makes a great Greatest Hits? Why aren't Nirvana and U2 doing the business? And why have all these superstar collections appeared at the same time? Reports in autumn indicated that British record sales in 2002 were so disappointing that the entire industry depended on Robbie Williams's Escapology dragging us into record shops. Is the barrage of Best ofs a sign of pure panic? Not according to Paul Williams, news editor of the music-biz bible, Music Week.

"It's been a tough year for the music industry globally, but the UK has weathered the storm far better than most territories. In two of the three quarters reported this year, turnover has increased year on year. It's only the UK and France that have shown such trends. The US and Germany have had swift declines.

"Of the Greatest Hits albums around, the Elvis and Nirvana albums come from the US record companies. The U2 one is part of a contract saying there will always be two Best ofs. This is the second instalment of that deal. The Rolling Stones one is around the band's 40th anniversary. It's certainly not the case that the industry here has decided, "Oh, God – look at these figures! We'd better scrabble together some Greatest Hits albums!"

"What is true is that the fourth quarter – including Christmas, of course – is always the most important, because 40 per cent of CDs are sold then. And Greatest Hits albums are a good way of bringing into record shops people who buy only a few CDs a year, the really casual fans who aren't interested in investigating the Stones' back-catalogue but are happy to buy a double CD with all their biggest hits."

But, if the chart is any indication, it hasn't worked. High in the chart this week are Donny Osmond and a live album by Lionel Richie. As Williams says, "It just shows that it isn't always the fashionable artists who sell in huge quantities."

So have the "cool" Best ofs been failures? "At this time of the year, the albums chart takes on a more conservative look because it's the mass market, rather than big music fans, that is out there buying. Maybe Nirvana simply don't appeal to a Greatest Hits market as much as Westlife. The Stones one will be a long-term catalogue album. If anyone claimed it would sell in the same quantities as The Beatles' 1 from a couple of years back, they were overegging it. Historically, the Beatles always far outsold the Stones, and that remains the case."

But there's also the key issue of quality. In terms of packaging and, even more significant for an artist's legacy, the actual sound, the Elvis and Bowie sets look cobbled together and sound as if someone recorded them from an ancient transistor radio. Surely two such important figures deserve better?

Williams won't be drawn, but answers with reference to the perennial jewel in England's pop crown. "With The Beatles, the back-catalogue is treated with the utmost respect because the Beatles and their representatives have the final say-so. That's how it should work, and the evidence that that's the best way forward is in the incredible sales of 1. Other artists are over-exploited, and it feels like flogging a dead horse." And that obviously does damage to an artist's future sales potential? "I'm not sure about damage. I do think there should always be a reason for a Greatest Hits. Shoving one together to make a fast buck generally doesn't work."

Maybe. But still, they come. All I'm saying is that, despite your rock snob insisting that Band X's best shot was the difficult third album with the 15-minute cosmic jam on side two, Band X's most listenable album is the collection of things people actually liked. Mostly, that's the singles. Sometimes it includes the album tracks that should've been singles. If the relative failure so far of Bowie, U2 and Nirvana in the Christmas Best of bonanza means anything, it's perhaps that the more discerning have worked out that they were shoved together to make a fast buck. And that there are more of us than The Man thinks.