BEST OF...

This is part of EMI Special Products' Ten Best series. Due to a massive Knack backlash during the early '80s (by those who felt the skinny tie-wearing new wavers were too hyped up for their own good), and the group never being able to truly follow up their smash debut, Get the Knack, it's easy to dismiss the Knack as a mere flash in the pan. But there's no denying the group has left behind several classic power pop songs in their wake, as evidenced by such subsequent greatest-hits CDs as 1999's Best of the Knack. A budget-priced collection that weighs in at barely over half-an-hour in length (only a meager ten tracks are included), Best of is in no way a definitive Knack overview (you'll be better off with the more extensive Very Best of the Knack disc from 1998, or better yet, the aforementioned Get the Knack). But if you just want the basic essentials from the much ballyhooed quartet, Best of the Knack contains most of the expected tracks: "Baby Talks Dirty," "Good Girls Don't," "Your Number or Your Name," and, of course, "My Sharona," the up-tempo, anthemic, Number One single that has gone on to become one of the new wave era's most instantly recognizable tracks (perhaps only outdone by Devo's "Whip It"). Given a bad rap the first time around, time has only improved the Knack's early work, as evidenced on Best of the Knack. ~ Greg Prato