Greatest Hits 1 outselling Greatest Hits 2

[OutlawManNJ]

I always found it weird that gh1 outsells gh2 since hotel california is on gh2. I bet over the years many people picked up gh1 and were dissapointed to learn that hc is not on it. Thats not how i feel but i bet many less eagle experts do. Obviously gh1 had a large head start in sales by quite a few years....but even later when both were out it seems like gh1 outsold 2. I think I even enjoy gh1 more, its happier, looser....but still strange that the megahit HC is on the one that sold less. Even stranger is that GH1 is the best selling album of all time in the USA even more so since HC is not on it. Do you prefer one over the other?

[Brooke]

I can't really say I prefer one over the other. I bought gh1 and played it a lot and only bought 2 many years later just to complete my collection. I can't say why! Both are great!

[UndertheWire]

Don't forget that the Hotel California album has also sold 16 million copies so if you add that to the 11m for GH2 and 5m for "The Very Best of", that brings it to 32 million album sales with Hotel California (and presumably 34m with Take it Easy).

[Freypower]

GH1 is more organic than GH2 with its dreadful cover & inclusion of a couple songs that weren't even hits. As UTW said you can now get VBO if you want a compilation with HC on it.

[OutlawManNJ]

Thats true gh2 cover is ugly. What were they thinking?

[Jonny Come Lately]

On the whole I am not surprised that GH1 is more successful than GH2, and I think GH1 deserves to be more successful. Part of the reason I think is that I feel GH1 served a genuinely valuable purpose when it was released, providing a chance for people who'd liked the OOTN singles to explore the band's earlier work, and of course later for listeners who were introduced to the band via Hotel California. It would thus have provided an introduction to the songs from the less successful first three albums.

By contrast, GH2 essentially summarised two commercially successful albums, including the smash hit Hotel California. I suspect there were a lot people who bought and enjoyed GH1 who then went out and bought HC. If these same people also bought The Long Run, the only tracks on GH2 that they would not have already heard would be Seven Bridges Road and After The Thrill Is Gone. With 7BR also being on Eagles Live, the only 'new' track these listeners would have got was the non-hit ATTIG. Releasing a completely new compilation album - as opposed to say an 'update' of GH1 with the number 1 singles (HT, HC, NKIT) replacing the lower charting singles (like AG or Tequila Sunrise) - after just two more single albums is unusual and therefore, the compilation does smack of the record label trying to cash in on the band's success, especially as they knew there would be no Eagles albums for the foreseeable future. I think I remember reading that neither Don or Glenn were wild about GH2 and did not care much about it.

Continuing on this theme, GH1 contains ten hit songs - as a summary of the most popular Eagles songs from the 1971-75 era, it is very difficult to argue with the choices. GH2, by contrast, contains at most 7-8 'hit' songs. I personally love The Sad Café and ATTIG, but neither song was truly a hit - I think In The City or Those Shoes would have been equally valid choices from The Long Run, and ATTIG is alone in featuring Bernie and not Joe, let alone Tim. More thought seems to have gone into the tracklist of GH1, where the songs in most cases are in similar places to the original albums - the GH2 tracklist doesn't make anywhere near as much sense IMO. This makes GH1 feel like a cohesive album, whereas GH2 feels like a collection of singles.

GH1 has sold so many copies over the years that it has acquired a legendary status, to the extent I think it would be fair to say that it now sells copies by reputation alone. I actually think I therefore gets recommended to people who would be better off buying the more comprehensive The Very Best Of. Allmusic, for instance, argues that the VBO album cannot hold a candle to GH1 - this makes no sense IMO, as disc 1 of VBO contains every single song from GH1 plus their most popular song from their later albums (Hotel California). Yet, for the casual fan who does buy HC, maybe The Long Run too, but is not that interested in the deeper tracks of the early 1970s, GH1 is still an excellent choice. I think GH2 is analogous to Led Zeppelin's Coda, not in being a hodgepodge of unused songs but rather in being rushed out with a view to cashing in on the music of an inactive band.

[OutlawManNJ]

Nice analysis Johnny!