The Good, The Bad & The Contractually Obligated Part 2: Taking a look at 3 of the world's biggest acts and their respective new compilations.

Call me anal or borderline obsessive but when it comes to record collections I like a sense of continuity and plain old fashioned sense. Particularly on the acts I hold close to my heart.

So you can imagine my displeasure when I heard about this release. After two serviceable compilations that each covered a decade's worth of material from Ireland's greatest band, it would be expected that once the period of 2000  2010 came to a close that a third collection would follow. Instead we are treated to a scattershot attempt at covering U2's entire recording career. Nice idea to tie it in with the release of their recently released autobiography, but to try and boil down a 25 year career into one disc (a career that has seen the band produce more hit songs than I have had hot dinners) is simply asking for trouble.

Believe me I have tried to crunch the numbers and come up with an acceptable track listing that fits onto one solitary disc and it is impossible. That's with jettisoning the two new songs which we will tackle later.

For starters, unless you have the U.K. or Australian versions of this release (where 'I Will Follow' from their debut kicks off this disc), then the earliest recordings that feature are from their third album: 1983s War. Preposterous? That's just the half of it. Not a sausage from their mid 90s period is to be seen. This means no 'Numb' or 'Lemon' or 'Stay' or 'Hold Me, Thrill Me' and while it can be argued that 1997s Pop album isn't the best source to mine songs from, last time I checked 'Discotheque' was fairly decent hit.

Then again it apparently isn't for me to debate the merits of this release because fans are continually being told that U218 Singles isn't being released for people like us. It is for new and casual fans as a nice introduction into the band's rich musical canon. Now I'm all for that but what is wrong with getting them to pick up the two previous Best Of records? (Other than the financial windfall heading Universal's way?)

What should have happened was to forget about another compilation and release instead a killer four or five track E.P. that features the two new tracks; both crackers by the way. The cover of punk act The Skids 'The Saints Are Coming' (recorded as a team up with Green Day) and the Beatlesesque 'Window In the Skies' are inspired pieces of work and along with, say, the unreleased song 'Mercy' from the last album sessions would have been a great bridge between How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb and the next album.

In the era of paid downloads, us fans (hardcore or otherwise) can now nab the new tracks and not have to shell out for something we pretty much own whole already. But for those of you that are new to U2: firstly welcome to Earth and secondly, look elsewhere for your first leap into their catalogue.