ELV1S 31 #1 Hits

With all the news around the 25th Anniversary of Elvis’ death and his worldwide number one hit ‘A Little Less Conversation’ The King is back where he belongs, in the spotlights. And so is the upcoming ‘best of’ release ’30 #1 Hits’. Expectations for this album are high, thanks to a heavy media campaign and even many fans are looking forward to it for the improved sound quality.

When Elvis hit the top spot in the U.K. charts with the ‘Nike remix’ of ‘A Little Less Conversation’ some people said the record between the Beatles and Elvis had finally been put straight since there was a simple record that proved that Elvis was bigger than the Beatles for some.

Apart from this (childish) Elvis vs. The Beatles battle there is one thing about the upcoming ‘30 #1 Hits’ that bothers us. The title is wrong since Elvis now has 31 #1 Hits, if you follow the sources BMG uses. So the correct title would be ‘ELV1S 31 #1 Hits’.

BMG put all its money and effort on this release hoping for the success of The Beatles’ (yes, those fab four again) ‘1’ compilation that topped the album charts worldwide. They created a strategy in which this is about the only Elvis release available by deleting a lot of titles. We don’t know if you visited your local record store recently, but in our local stores Elvis was nowhere to be found, except for the single ‘A Little Less Conversation’ and some copies of ‘Today Tomorrow and Forever’, and the recently released DVD’s. Especially in a time when there is this much attention for Elvis that looks a bit strange.

BMG already had started the campaign for the ‘ELV1S 30 #1 Hits’ when ‘A Little Less Conversation’ was released. They even hesitated to add the track to the album as a bonus track, but did so by popular demand of the fans. This will probably interest new and young Elvis fans, who like the remix, in buying this album. We can understand that BMG was surprised by the massive success of ‘A Little Less Conversation’ and their marketing machine was already running, but we’d rather have a correction in the marketing strategy (and a positive one, Elvis has gained another #1 hit) than a campaign which is dead wrong promoting an album with the wrong title.

So BMG, come on and do the right thing, upgrade the title to ‘ELV1S 31 #1 Hits’ and put the record straight. It was about time an Elvis release got heavy media backing, and we want to compliment BMG on the great worldwide (web) exposure this campaign has for Elvis, but PLEASE do it with the correct title, ‘31 #1 HITS’ … we are sure that this is not our opinion only.