The Best Of Genesisby Genesis

There are a ton of Genesis collections out there, sorting the band's music in many different ways, and rightfully so. The band has gone through several changes throughout their forty plus years as a band. They have their progressive rock songs, classic rock song, pop songs, ballads...the band has never allowed themselves to be pigeonholed into one particular type of music. Whatever they have decided to write has always been great. But taking on a collection of their work and calling it their best forces the album's curators to put themselves into a position where they must put this work into one category. Calling it their "Best" is even tougher. Is it their fan's favorite songs? Their biggest hits? Looking at the tracklist, it's clear that this isn't really any of these, it's a personal playlist.

Notably, there are no songs from the Peter Gabriel-led era of the band here. There are also none of the longer songs, so this likely intends to be the best of their more popular songs. It's very heavy on the Invisible Touch and We Can't Dance albums; their last studio album, Calling All Stations, isn't represented. So this leads us to believe it's a Phil Collins-era best. Slightly baffling is the inclusion of "Man On The Corner", a great sing, while "ABACAB" from the same album, was left off. So there is definitely a personal bias in the song selection.

Getting past that, let's take s look at what is here. There is no particular order to the tracks; there are four from "We Can't Dance". Two fun rock tracks from that album are here, "I Can't Dance", which is a scathing, if jealous, look at models, and "Jesus He Knows Me", a parody on televangelists. Both high points of the album. Also included is "No Son Of Mine", a very serious look at domestic abuse, and the toll it takes on a family. This is rounded out by "Hold On My Heart", a soft ballad. This last one was a small hit, but definitely more of a Phil Collins song than a Genesis song.

There are also four songs from Invisible Touch; the album produced five big hits, "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" was left off this collection. However, the band's only number one, "Invisible Touch" is here, along with one of their most famous rock tracks, "Land of Confusion". Two ballads are also included, "In Too Deep" and "Throwing It All Away", arguably their best ballad ever. They hit a nerve with the pop charts in 1986, and there is some great music here to price that.

From here, we have some confusing choices. The Genesis self-titled album is represented only by "Mama", while "That's All" has been left off. "Home By The Sea" and "Illegal Alien" also had chart success, but were not included. "Mama" is a dark pop classic, and is certainly worthy of any best of set. They reached back as far as Trick of the Tail for "A Trick of the Tail", and to Wind and Wuthering for "Your Own Special Way", certainly chart highlights for these albums, and the only representations for former guitarist Steve Hackett, though not the best examples of his work.

Early post-Hackett classics "Turn It On Again" and "Follow You, Follow Me" are here, though, two songs that have been included in every tour since their release. The most interesting choice is "Many Too Many" from "...And Then There Were Three...", a slightly more obscure song than the rest, but the most hauntingly beautiful of the album.

Except for the two songs noted, the performers in these tracks are Phil Collins at lead vocals and drums, Tony Banks on keyboards and Mike Rutherford on guitars. The selection of songs is very much biased; this is not based on chart position or fan voting, this is one fan's love letter to the band. I would suggest that there is more to the band than this, even for this particular era of their work, but for fans of their pop hits, it's a fine place to start. Hopefully this can lead you down a rabbit's hole to discover more of what they have to offer, until you can make your own decision of what is their "Best".