NOW Thats What I Call Music! 4

Product Information

The band is on five Now albums, which is way more than other rock bands like the Killers (one time), Radiohead (one time), Kings of Leon (zero times), and the White Stripes (zero times—not even “Seven Nation Army” is music). In between there’s Fastball, Tonic, “Flagpole Sitta,” the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, and “Barbie Girl” by Aqua. If this was music in late 2016, then those months are truly the darkest days of American pop culture. Ultimately though, I went with “Bye Bye Bye” because it’s the song that helped ’NSync snatch the boy band belt from the Backstreet Boys once and for all.

NOW That’s What I Call Music! 74 [US] - Genius NOW That’s What I Call Music! 74 [US] - Genius

These songs were not factored into scoring, as they are mostly random shots in the dark at predicting future hits that never panned out. Because our fearless leader in music determination set forth the difficult task of providing updates at least three times a year, many times there just aren’t enough defining songs to fill a compilation album. I’ve given myself to the power of the Now Formula, and I trust its ability to objectively determine the best Now. It also doesn’t have any massive hits—“Closing Time” was the album’s longest-charting song at 37 weeks on the Hot 100—which is why this bizarre conglomeration of songs is ranked so low.

Now 43 is an inflection point in the Now nexus, capturing most of the artists either on the downslope of their careers or headed toward their apex. Then he jumped on a glorious song with dolphin sounds and released “Sorry,” a genius track that outright apologizes for all of his past behavior.

NOW That’s What I Call Music 4 [UK] - Genius

I hate to tell you this, but “Lady Marmalade” by Christina Aguilera, Pink, Lil’ Kim, and Mya IS NOT MUSIC. It goes from “Lean wit It, Rock wit It” by Dem Franchize Boyz to “Stay Fly” by Three 6 Mafia to “I’m Sprung” by T-Pain. But tossing a meaningless also-ran on the next compilation is a nice way to say, “Hey, my bad, Sisqó.

Since “How You Remind Me” landed on Now 10, Nickelback has appeared on 12 editions of Now—more than 20 percent of the time.