A very poor attempt at a compilation.

Tracklist
1     Who Needs Love (Like That)     3:06
2     It Doesn't Have To Be     3:46
3     The Circus     4:06
4     You Surround Me     3:58
5     Am I Right?     4:17
6     Sometimes     3:39
7     When Will I See You Again     2:58
8     Video Killed The Radio Star     3:49
9     Victim Of Love     3:38
10     Ship Of Fools     4:03
11     Star     3:38
12     Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime     3:20
13     Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)     3:56
14     Chorus     4:29
15     Always     4:04
16     I Love Saturday

It really was a strange compilation, I remember asking Vince on twitter if Erasure had anything to do with it to which he replied in classic Vince wit "We wrote some of the songs". 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 (not to mention omitting the best one) is beyond me. The only thing I can think is that they were trying to deviate from the standard Hits! collection of which we'd already had plenty but really it just came off as weird.  

To be honest I still don’t actually own a copy of this album,one day I may give in.

Quoted from opalfruit

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.

Oh L'amour wasn't a chart hit but is a hit with fans at concerts and did re-chart at 13 in 2003 and Hits having the ABBA covers was fine since ABBA-esque was Erasure first and only chart number 1 to date, I think it's fair to say the EP deserves a spot on a hits compilation. Although, I have no idea why they only put 3 of them on there (what have they got against S.O.S?)  like I said I can see what they were trying to do I just think they failed to hit the mark, like you said some tracks spill over from the Hits album it's just all a bit janky. Like Pugie I don't own this and probably never will and while we're on the subject of compilations including covers HITS! including ABBA-esqe fits cause it was a hit.. calling an album Erasure Essential and including Video Killed The Radio Star when Andy doesn't even sing on the track is just wrong.  

That being said it's still Erasure so even though it's a bit rubbish it's still great.