I bought the album Best of Bowie, thinking that I would own this collection of the songs I do like as opposed to purchasing the entire back collection of his work to get the eight songs I want. I put it on this afternoon to groove out to some tracks and while listening to “Under Pressure” I realized that there’s a verse missing at the climax of the chorus. Hunh. So I continued listening to the album, and when “Young Americans” came on, I was shocked to find that they clipped a bunch of stuff out of this song as well. Big deal, you’re saying. So what. Well, that’s what I bought the album for in the first place. I wanted to hear the whole song like it was on the LP I used to own in 1986, not an edited version. I understand that they wanted to jam as many songs on this CD as possible, and while I applaud that effort, couldn’t we have done without “This Is Not America” (arguably one of the weaker songs in his discography) to get the full long-playing version of each song?

Listening, RIAA? This is a great excuse for file-sharing. I feel like I bought a copy of the new Harry Potter and found out that it’s missing the entire middle chapter.