With a career spanning over 16 years, you would expect this CD to be packed with anthems from their debut self-titled
Offspring album, to the disasterous
Splinter. You would think that a band with such a reputation as The Offspring, undoubtedly one of the major pop-punk bands around nowadays, to give their fans a collection of raw and uncut songs for them to listen to, letting them into a swirling life from the badly recorded songs to the poppier more mainstream ones. You would think...
This is sadly not the case. The Offspring have presented their dedicated fans with 14 tracks of pop-punk masterpieces. 14 tracks, I hear you say? Yeah, 14 out of 118. I understand that it must be difficult to decide one songs to put on greatest hits albums, but this is taking it a little too far in my opinion.
We start out with the new track, "Can't Repeat". I must admit that I am a bit of a sucker for this song, but in the end it is nothing special to listen to, especially for a greatest hits. Typical Offspring formula really; Catchy riff + occasional "Woah"'s + Dexter's rough voice = "Can't Repeat".
Then the album moves onto "Come Out And Play". Notice how they completely missed out the debut
Offspring and
Ignition, and album most fanboy's of this band will argue is their best album. No "Jennifer Lost The War", "Kick Him When He's Down" or "Session".
After the
Smash era has passed with "Self Esteem" and "Gotta Get Away", we move onto 2 songs from
Ixnay On The Hombre. My personal favourite album by the Orange Country pop-punkers, and I get 2 tracks? We are given the 2 most "listener-friendly" songs in my opinion as well, something that seems like a cheap cash-in for the band.
So now kicks in "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)", the song that got them everywhere. Their goofiest song, reminding us why so many of their fans abandoned the band. Then we get "Why Don't You Get A Job", another goofy song to me, and "The Kid's Aren't Alright", which I will admit is one of my favourite songs by the band.
Clearly the band have lost touch with the music after we are given only 2 songs from
Conspiracy Of One, a b-side (Which is probably one of their best songs as a "major" pop-punk band) and 2 more off
Splinter.
It's depressing really. A band of this stature have fallen more and more into the trap of major labels. The denial of their first 2 albums, the small tracklisting of their "greatest hits". It just shows how much this band has degraded over the years.
And yet we, the fans, just hope and pray for that one good record they will make. The one where we can establish that we were right to stand by these legends ever since the anthemic
Americana was released. But until then, it looks like we are still waiting, and sadly, this is not going to give us any good memories of the band.
Recommended tracks
- Come Out And Play
- All I Want
- The Kid's Aren't Alright
- Defy You
