Upon Perusing an a-ha Greatest Hits CD at HMV

So there I am, wandering around an HMV today. I like doing that sometimes - it gives you that odd out-of-time feeling you get when perusing, say, a fur store or a telegraph office. Living museums. Anyway, HMV is struggling to remain relevant by selling DVDs, Wii games and, er, coffee mugs. There's still a corner that sells CDs. They even bring in new ones sometimes.

But a fair amount of the 500 or so titles they carry are catalogue items. And it turns out that at the HMV in the Eaton Centre you can not only but an 'a-ha greatest hits' CD, but... and how bizarre is this... you can actually choose from two different a-ha greatest hits CDs. One of them was even a 2-CD set.

I was too freaked out by the idea of 2 CDs filled with material recorded by Norway's third-largest fossil fuel export to consider that one. But since I imagine this means that HMV has decided that the only people in all of Toronto willing to actually dish out money for physical copies of music are people terminally stuck in the 80s (or Norwegian-Canadians), I took a look at the 1-CD version. It was called "The Singles 1984-2004" and contained the following tracks:

1. Ohmigod! I love this song! The 80s rock!
2. Hm. I recognise the name. Can't remember the song, though.
3. Never heard of it.
4. Hm. I recognise the name. Can't remember the song, though.
5. Never heard of it.
6. Never heard of it.
7. Never heard of it.
8. Oh, that's right. a-ha did a James Bond theme (giggle).
9. Never heard of it.
10. Never heard of it.
11. Never heard of it.
12. Never heard of it.
13. Never heard of it.
14. Never heard of it.
15. Never heard of it.
16. Never heard of it.
17. Never heard of it.
18. Never heard of it.
19. Never heard of it.

And that is me being charitable. Poor a-ha. And poor HMV And poor calendar, for being 2011 against its will and 25 years earlier, as it would perhaps like to be.