1988 collection from Quality Records packs in the hits

By MEGAMIXDOTCOM
Published Friday, July 5, 2024

If you’ve had a chance to listen to the Super Hits Podcast, you may know that myself and co-host Sliiiiip like to talk about compilation albums. When covering a particular song, we will often present the listener with a list of notable compilations on which the song appeared. It’s a fun exercise that allows us to highlight the myriad of “Various Artist” albums that were available during the physical media era.

Prior to the rise of online music piracy and the subsequent takeover of the industry by the streaming giants, compilation albums were a great way to easily obtain songs by a multitude of artists for a decent price. You could head over to the mall or department store and pick up an LP, cassette or CD chock full of songs for around 10 bucks.

Growing up, my parents had a fairly standard record collection – nothing spectacular, but serviceable. They had discs like Saturday Night Fever and Thriller, cassettes like No Jacket Required and Like A Virgin and my Dad’s extensive library of releases from Canadian rockers like Harlequin, Trooper and Loverboy.

Compilation-wise, they mostly stuck to soundtracks – but did own a few K-Tel and Quality Records releases like Rock ’82 and Rock 85, the latter of which I will have to feature here at some point because its tracklist is just ridiculously good.

When I got to an age where I started becoming interested in making my own music purchases, it made sense to try and stretch my meager budget as far as I could. Compilations offered a way to get as much music into my hands for as little money as possible. I amassed a small library of cassettes and thus began a love affair with the art of comps.

Outside of movie and television soundtracks, compilations serve no real purpose in today’s music landscape. Which is why I have chosen to try and preserve for myself these albums by making playlist versions of as many notable comps as I can. How will I choose what’s notable? Well the methodology varies, but really I’m going with ones I remember. And maybe some others than seem interesting. We’ll see how it plays out.

And now, with all of that out of the way, let’s take a look at the first compilation on my list: Rock Eighty Eight.

A quick aside – I was so happy to stumble across the commercial embedded above. It is so good. Reading the names of the (mostly defunct) retailers that slide by at the bottom strangely brings me such joy. There is nothing like seeing the name “Woolco” and getting that sweet feeling of capitalist nostalgia.

Anyway, I chose this Quality Records release from 1988 as the first subject because I did own this on cassette back in the day. I recall bringing my Walkman with me to Cub Scout camp sometime in mid-1988, where I would listen to Side 1 over and over while staring at a trading card of mall-pop goddess Tiffany that I had cut from the back of a Crunch ‘n Munch box.

Obviously I have a particular affinity for this collection due to nostalgic feelings, but in actuality the tracklist is fairly strong. Five of the songs hit #1 in the US, while six topped the charts here in Canada. Outside of a few tracks (like Europe’s power ballad “Carrie”), the genre choice here is very solidly locked in as danceable pop and this album bops along nicely for the most part.

On Rock Eighty Eight, over half the tracks feature a woman as the main artist or the front person of a group. It was fairly rare to see nine women getting credit on a compilation album that decade – outside of releases with titles like Super Ladies Of The 80s, or Bring On The Girls.

Now, a standard practice with these Canadian compilations seemed to be the inclusion of songs by a few token homegrown artists. That said, Rock Eighty Eight includes only one – Sway’s cover of Ottawan’s “Hands Up (Give Me Your Heart)” is tacked on at the end, and while at first glance it may seem hamfisted, this version had actually peaked at #7 in Canada.

Overall, Rock Eighty Eight is one of the better compilations out there from the time period. To date, we have covered six of these songs on the Super Hits Podcast, and there could be a couple more that show up on the show in the future.

⭐ RATING: 7 out of 10
💖 BEST TRACK: T’Pau – “Heart And Soul”
💀 WORST TRACK: Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam – “Head To Toe”

A full tracklist and links to listen to the album on Apple Music and Spotify are below. Thanks for reading, friends!

---