Elvis Presley - Elvis 75: Good Rockin’ Tonight

One hundred songs you’ll have heard before you die

What’s quite fun is if, for a landmark birthday, your friends and family get together, pool a load of old photographs of you through the ages and present them to you in a book. It’s a nice trip down memory lane for everyone involved: happy, sad, hilarious, genuinely moving and a touching statement from your most loved ones. It’s quite fun. Once.

What would be really dull is if they did that every year for every birthday, using the same photos and just changing the cover a little. What’s also really dull is the way Sony release an Elvis compilation every year, often for Presley’s birthday (in this case his 75th), full of all the same songs. Yes, they’re classics; no, we don’t want to buy them again. Oh, you might want to reacquaint yourselves with some overlooked mid-60s cuts, but then Presley’s take on, say, Dylan’s Tomorrow Is A Long Time is little more than flaccid; “the pelvis” had left the building.

We could talk for days about everything Sony does wrong (and Follow That Dream does right) with Elvis’ catalogue; and it’s a shame, since they looked to be getting better with this year’s In Memphis reissue. Back to the generic comps, then. It even has JLX’s A Little Less Conversation remix at the end – for anyone who hasn’t bashed their own skull in just to avoid hearing it again.

2 stars 2 stars

Sony | 88697606252 (4-CD)

Reviewed by Jason Draper
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