📼 It started with vinyl, survived the cassette, conquered the CD rack and somehow made it all the way into the streaming generation.

For more than four decades, NOW That’s What I Call Music! has been quietly documenting the soundtrack of British life.

And we mean all of it.

The stone-cold classics. The one-hit wonders. The massive rock anthems. The cheesy pop songs you publicly claimed to hate but somehow knew every bloody word to. The dance tracks that instantly transport you back to sticky nightclub floors. The songs your parents played. The songs you played. And increasingly, the songs your kids are playing.

For generations of British music fans, a NOW album wasn’t simply another compilation.

It was a musical time capsule.

Ask someone which NOW album they owned first and there’s a reasonable chance you’ll be able to roughly calculate their age.

So grab the battered CD wallet, dig that old cassette player out of the attic and prepare for an enormous nostalgia trip.

Because we’re going back to where it all began.

🎵 Before NOW – The Compilation Album Wild West

Compilation albums weren’t exactly a revolutionary concept when NOW arrived.

Record labels had been packaging collections of hits together for years.

But there was a problem.

A lot of them weren’t actually filled with the original recordings people heard on the radio.

Budget compilations sometimes featured cover versions performed by session musicians, occasionally packaged to look suspiciously like collections containing the genuine artists.

Imagine buying an album expecting the actual chart hits and discovering what sounded like Dave from accounting having a crack at them instead.

Not ideal.

By the early 1980s, compilation albums featuring original artists were becoming increasingly important, but record labels generally controlled their own catalogues.

That meant getting the biggest songs from competing companies onto one release wasn’t always straightforward.

Then two major forces decided to work together.

Virgin Records and EMI.

And British compilation history was about to change.

🎸 1983 – NOW Is Born

The first NOW That’s What I Call Music! arrived in the UK in November 1983.

And what a year to launch a compilation series.

The British charts were absolutely stacked.

New wave, synth-pop, rock, soul and mainstream pop were colliding spectacularly, while MTV and music videos were transforming how audiences discovered artists.

The first NOW captured that moment.

Among the artists represented were huge names including Phil Collins, Duran Duran, UB40, Bonnie Tyler, Culture Club, The Human League, Madness, Kajagoogoo, Mike Oldfield and Simple Minds.

This wasn’t some bargain-bin collection of suspicious recreations.

These were the records people were actually hearing on Radio 1.

That was the magic.

Instead of buying several singles, listeners could suddenly take home a whopping collection of current hits.

Two records.

Loads of songs.

One purchase.

For teenagers carefully rationing pocket money, it was genius.

And the timing couldn’t have been better.

🐷 Where Did THAT Name Come From?

Even the name has become part of British music folklore.

The inspiration came from an old advertising poster featuring a pig listening to a chicken singing.

The slogan?

“Now That’s What I Call Music.”

Virgin boss Richard Branson reportedly had the poster displayed around the company offices.

When Virgin and EMI needed a title for their new compilation project, the phrase fitted beautifully.

It was catchy.

It was slightly ridiculous.

And crucially, it sounded enthusiastic.

Not:

“Various Artists – Popular Songs November 1983.”

Because that would’ve been bloody awful.

Instead:

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC!

It practically shouted at you from the record shop.

The famous pig imagery would subsequently become closely associated with the early NOW releases before the series developed the colourful logo-driven artwork generations would recognise.

📺 Those Legendary NOW Adverts

If you grew up during the 1980s, ‘90s or early 2000s, you probably don’t just remember NOW albums.

You remember the adverts.

A new NOW compilation arriving felt like an event.

Suddenly your television would explode into thirty seconds of:

HIT!

HIT!

MASSIVE HIT!

Artist!

Song!

Another artist!

Another song!

Some ridiculously energetic voiceover!

Then came the immortal promise that approximately half the known universe’s greatest songs had somehow been squeezed onto two CDs.

Those adverts became part of the experience.

You’d be sitting watching Saturday morning television or some random evening programme when suddenly…

“NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC…”

And immediately you knew Christmas or your birthday list was about to get another entry.

💿 Vinyl, Cassette… And Then CD

The way people consumed music changed dramatically during NOW’s lifetime.

And NOW changed with it.

The earliest editions naturally appeared on vinyl and cassette.

The cassette versions became especially useful.

Suddenly NOW could travel.

Into bedrooms.

Into portable stereos.

Into Walkmans.

Into cars.

And yes, occasionally into cassette decks that would decide to eat the tape halfway through your favourite song.

Anyone who remembers carefully winding mangled cassette tape back into the shell using a pencil has earned their veteran music-listener badge.

But another format was coming.

The compact disc.

CDs gradually transformed the music industry during the 1980s and early ’90s, and NOW embraced them.

Eventually the double-CD edition became arguably the definitive NOW format.

Two shiny discs.

A chunky plastic case.

A booklet.

And enough chart hits to keep a family car journey going for hours.

🔥 The 1990s – NOW Becomes An Institution

By the 1990s, NOW wasn’t merely successful.

It was practically part of the furniture.

And what a decade it had to work with.

Britpop.

Grunge.

Eurodance.

Boy bands.

Girl groups.

Rave.

Indie.

Alternative rock.

R&B.

Manufactured pop.

Dancefloor monsters.

And some genuinely bizarre novelty records.

A typical NOW album could produce musical whiplash.

You might get Oasis, followed by The Prodigy, followed by Spice Girls, followed by Jamiroquai, followed by some completely bonkers novelty hit everyone collectively agreed never to discuss again.

But that’s exactly why NOW worked.

It wasn’t trying to tell you what was cool.

It was telling you what was happening.

And there’s a massive difference.

🇬🇧 Britpop Arrives

For rock fans, the mid-’90s editions are particularly fascinating.

Britpop had turned guitar music back into mainstream chart warfare.

Oasis. Blur. Pulp. Supergrass. Ocean Colour Scene.

Suddenly bands that might previously have occupied alternative sections of record shops were battling pop acts at the top of the charts.

And NOW documented it.

That’s one reason old editions remain such interesting snapshots.

Look through the track listing of an old NOW compilation and you’re not simply seeing popular songs.

You’re seeing genres collide in real time.

👧 Spice Up Your NOW Collection

Then came Spice Girls.

Few bands represent ’90s British pop culture more completely.

“Wannabe” exploded during 1996 and suddenly Girl Power was everywhere.

NOW albums subsequently became packed with the enormous pop acts that dominated the second half of the decade.

Spice Girls.

Backstreet Boys.

Take That.

Boyzone.

Steps.

S Club.

All Saints.

Five.

And plenty more.

To teenage music snobs pretending they listened exclusively to serious guitar music, this was obviously unacceptable.

Naturally, they somehow still knew every word to “Tragedy”.

Funny that.

🎸 Rock Was Never Completely Missing

Despite NOW being primarily associated with mainstream pop, rock has repeatedly appeared throughout the series.

Over the decades, NOW compilations have featured music from some absolutely enormous guitar-based artists.

Queen.

Bon Jovi.

U2.

Oasis.

Radiohead.

The Clash.

Aerosmith.

Paramore.

And many others.

That’s another interesting element of NOW’s history.

The series shows just how often rock music has crossed into mainstream pop culture.

A massive guitar anthem didn’t stop being rock simply because it entered the singles chart.

If millions of people were buying it, NOW wanted it.

💿 The Golden Age Of The Double CD

Then came what many readers of a certain age will consider peak NOW.

The late ’90s and early 2000s.

The double-CD era.

This was when owning the latest NOW felt almost compulsory.

Record shops would have enormous displays.

Supermarkets stocked them.

Christmas stockings contained them.

Birthday presents contained them.

Cars contained them.

Bedrooms contained stacks of them.

And every household seemed to have at least one NOW disc mysteriously separated from its original case.

Somewhere in Britain there is probably a warehouse containing twelve million orphaned Disc 2s.

🛒 The Record Shop Ritual

There was also something wonderfully physical about buying one.

You’d walk into Woolworths, HMV or your local record shop.

Find the latest NOW.

Pick it up.

Flip it over.

And inspect the track listing.

This was serious business.

First five tracks?

Excellent.

Middle section?

Couple of questionable ones.

Disc Two?

Ohhhh, there’s the good stuff.

Then you’d discover that one massive song you expected wasn’t included and spend ten minutes wondering why.

No algorithms.

No infinite playlists.

No skipping through thirty million songs.

Just two discs and whatever chaos the record labels had assembled.

Lovely stuff.

🚗 NOW And The Great British Car Journey

There should probably be an academic study into how many British family arguments have occurred while a NOW album played in the background.

Holiday journey?

NOW.

Trip to see relatives?

NOW.

School run?

NOW.

Someone insisting they wanted Disc Two when everyone else wanted Disc One?

Civil war.

Before Spotify playlists became standard in cars, compilation CDs were brilliant.

Put one disc in and leave it alone.

Fifty-ish songs later, you’d crossed half the country.

Unless the CD started skipping.

Then Dad would take it out, aggressively wipe it on his shirt and somehow expect that to repair microscopic scratches.

It occasionally worked.

Science remains baffled.

🎧 The iPod Generation Changes Everything

Then music consumption changed again.

During the 2000s, digital downloads and MP3 players began dismantling the idea that listeners needed physical compilations.

Why buy an album containing 40 songs when you could simply download the eight you actually wanted?

Then streaming arrived.

Spotify.

Apple Music.

YouTube.

Instant playlists.

Suddenly anyone could build their own personalised NOW album in minutes.

In theory, this should have killed the compilation album.

And yet…

NOW survived.

🤘 How The Hell Did NOW Survive Streaming?

Simple.

NOW became more than a collection of current songs.

It became a brand.

And nostalgia became one of its greatest weapons.

Alongside the main numbered series came an enormous ecosystem of themed collections.

Decades.

Genres.

Christmas.

Dance.

Rock.

Love songs.

Party records.

Movies.

Years.

Classic pop.

And practically every musical theme imaginable.

More recently, the NOW Yearbook releases have leaned brilliantly into nostalgia, revisiting individual years and allowing listeners to experience the musical landscape of a particular moment.

Want 1983?

Sorted.

Want to disappear into another era?

There’s probably a NOW compilation waiting.

🔄 Vinyl Comes Back From The Dead

Here’s where the story gets wonderfully circular.

NOW started during the vinyl era.

Then vinyl declined.

Cassette disappeared.

CD became king.

Downloads attacked CD.

Streaming attacked downloads.

And then…

Vinyl came roaring back.

Suddenly NOW albums were appearing on vinyl again.

Collectors could buy beautifully packaged retrospective editions covering decades they’d originally experienced on cassette or CD.

The format had travelled full circle.

From vinyl…

to cassette…

to CD…

to digital…

to streaming…

and back to vinyl.

Music formats really are ridiculous when you think about it.

🎂 40 Years Of NOW

In 2023, NOW celebrated its 40th anniversary.

Four decades after that first compilation appeared, the brand marked the milestone with retrospective releases celebrating music from across its history.

Think about what that means.

When NOW began, Culture Club, Duran Duran and The Human League were contemporary chart stars.

Hip-hop was still relatively young.

Britpop hadn’t happened.

Grunge hadn’t exploded.

The Spice Girls didn’t exist.

Britney Spears was a baby.

Spotify was science fiction.

YouTube was decades away.

TikTok would’ve sounded like something produced by a clock.

Yet NOW remained.

📚 NOW Albums Have Become Historical Documents

This might be the most interesting thing about the whole series.

Old NOW albums have accidentally become historical documents.

Take any numbered edition and look through the track listing.

You’ll immediately see what British popular culture sounded like at that exact moment.

Not necessarily what critics thought was important.

Not necessarily what eventually became regarded as classic.

What people were actually listening to.

That’s incredibly valuable.

Because music history has a habit of tidying everything up afterwards.

Decades get reduced to convenient narratives.

The ’70s becomes punk and disco.

The ’80s becomes synth-pop.

The ’90s becomes Britpop and grunge.

The 2000s becomes indie and manufactured pop.

But real charts were much messier.

And NOW preserves that mess.

Beautifully.

😂 The Forgotten Hits Are Half The Fun

Everyone remembers the classics.

But revisiting an old NOW track listing becomes genuinely hilarious when you encounter a song your brain hasn’t accessed for 25 years.

Suddenly:

BANG.

You’re thirteen again.

You’re standing in Woolworths.

You’ve got £10 birthday money.

Your haircut is questionable.

Your fashion choices are worse.

And some forgotten pop song has unlocked an entire section of your memory you didn’t know existed.

That’s the true power of these compilations.

The obvious classics are brilliant.

But the forgotten songs?

They’re the time machines.

🤔 Which NOW Was YOUR First?

This is where things get dangerous.

Because asking music fans which NOW album they first owned can trigger serious nostalgia.

Some readers will remember the vinyl years.

Others will immediately picture cassette boxes.

For plenty of ‘90s kids, it’ll be one of those colourful double-CD cases.

And younger listeners may have discovered NOW as an established heritage brand rather than something that felt new.

Everyone has their era.

And inevitably everyone thinks theirs was the best.

Obviously.

🎶 More Than A Compilation

It’s easy to dismiss NOW albums as disposable chart collections.

But their longevity tells a different story.

NOW That’s What I Call Music! has documented more than four decades of changing tastes, technology and popular culture.

It survived the decline of vinyl.

It survived the death of the cassette.

It survived collapsing CD sales.

It survived downloads.

It survived streaming.

And now it’s simultaneously a current music brand, nostalgia machine and collectors’ playground.

That’s quite an achievement for something that began as two record companies sticking a load of hits together.

🤘 The Riff Report Verdict

NOW albums were never supposed to be cool.

And that’s probably exactly why they’ve lasted.

They didn’t care whether something was underground, fashionable, critically acclaimed or destined to become horribly embarrassing six months later.

If Britain was listening to it, there was a decent chance NOW wanted it.

And the result is one enormous, chaotic musical diary.

Some pages contain masterpieces.

Some contain guilty pleasures.

Some contain songs humanity probably should’ve left buried.

But that’s the beauty of it.

Because music isn’t just about the records critics eventually decide were important.

It’s about the songs playing when we were growing up.

The records blasting from bedroom stereos.

The cassette in Mum’s car.

The CD playing during the journey to the seaside.

The track everyone danced to at the school disco.

The song attached to your first holiday, first relationship, first gig or first spectacularly dodgy haircut.

And somewhere among more than four decades of NOW albums, there’s probably a soundtrack to one of those memories.

So here’s the big question…

💬 What Was The First NOW Album You Ever Owned?

Was yours on vinyl?

Cassette?

CD?

And which NOW compilation had the greatest track listing of all time?

Dig through those old collections, check the loft and prepare to feel ancient.

Because somewhere out there, the NOW album you remember buying when it was brand new is now considered retro.

Yeah.

Sorry about that. 😂

Keep it loud, keep digging through those musical memories, and we’ll see you down the front. 🤘🎶

— The Riff Report