Have you heard Love Island: The Pool Party yet? You really shouldn’t. The compilation album features Little Mix and Cheat Codes’ Only You, and various other bangers in that modern vernacular where “summer” is a PC plugin, and DJ Khaled is only ever seconds away from shouting his own name. True to the tag, this is an album you’d love if you’d spent your childhood locked in a darkened room with just ITVBe for company, so that you could only communicate in clucking emotional cliches. Regardless of if you were that Kaspar Hauser of electro-schlock or not, you’d still be left with a very big question: “Why am I buying a compilation album in 2018?”
Besides the still surprisingly big Now That’s What I Call ... series, the streaming world has bulldozed the genre. What’s the difference between a compilation and a playlist? About six minutes in the Spotify search bar. It is no coincidence that the next Fabric album, Fabric 100, will be the label’s last. Upmarket comps such as Back to Mine, AnotherLateNight and Under the Influence petered out nearly a decade ago. But what about the behemoth of them all, Ministry of Sound? Well, it’s putting out Love Island: The Pool Party, as it happens.
It’s a sad but logical endpoint. As a venue, MoS was always sneered at by “proper” clubbers as a sort of superclub simulator for tourists. But its compilations benefited from that. Distilling nightclub culture down to its essentials was a gateway for anyone too young or remote to enjoy the real thing. The formula worked and relentless ads helped it shift 70m units worldwide. By its 2004 peak, Ministry was sub-dividing its definitive set, The Annual, adding Spring and Summer versions. It started to saturate the market, muscling in on other genres like garage.
By 2016, however, the compilations business had declined and the company was bought by Sony, which – beyond Love Island: Pool Party – seems to be using the brand to sell physical box sets to dads. Want a baffling set of 40 dancehall reggae classics spanning Buju Banton’s Murderer and 10cc’s Dreadlock Holiday? Why not try Ministry’s Throwback Dancehall Reggae? There’s one for mods, featuring a scooter on the cover, and a Britpop set called Live Forever, which is even more on-the-nose than it sounds.
It is hard not to feel sorry for the labels. The biggest compilations in the world these days are Spotify’s “mood” playlists: Electronic Concentration, Pride, Workout. As form has come to follow function, I can foresee a time when Ministry of Sound saturates the market with comps for every modern moment: MoS Presents FOMO Saturday Nights Alone or The Ultimate Gig Economy Unexpected Downtime Album. I’m assembling the Smug Writer’s Hatchet Job Psych-Up Anthology right now.