The song selection is all over the place and to have Video Killed The Radio Star (the worse OPS cover) over Oh L'amour and A Little Respect is just mental and quite how can it be called Erasure Essential while having 4 OPS covers.
I suspect it's meant to be a kind of follow-up and companion piece to 'Hits - the very best off', and it assumes you've already got that album. The lack of Oh L'amour is neither here or there - it was never a hit anyway - but the omission of ALR was probably so it didn't compete with the other Hits album that it was featured on. It's for the casual buyer who bought 'Hits' - who bought that mainly because it had ALR and some songs they know and remember on it - and now wants a little bit more Erasure. Although it's slightly ruined by repeating a song or two. As for the inclusion of OPS tracks - I think they did that so it could mirror the structure and format of the HITS album. HITS had cover versions on it (some ABBA songs), so this one did as well (some OPS tracks). It's the sequel, or even CD2 of 'HITS', sold probably as a point of sale item in Garages and the like to people who may have just been listening to HITS in the car. It's a strange one for sure, but maybe that just gives it some charm! And let's face it - to die-hard fans, no compilation of singles is more or less essential than another. |