Flypast 2002 11

"The Exciting Wilson Pickett", released in 1966, was the 3rd album by R&B and soul singer Wilson Pickett. The album charted at #3 on the U.S. Billboard R&B albums chart and #21 on the popular albums chart, becoming the highest-charting studio album of Pickett's career. The making of the album saw Pickett end his relationship with Stax Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had cut his early singles, and move to Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where he would record for the next two years. According to AllMusic, this album firmly established Picket's "stature as a major '60s soul man". The album launched four major hits for Pickett, but AllMusic emphasizes that the album cuts, "of nearly an equal level", will be of more interest to collectors.

Franklin's Columbia years are hard to summarize in compilations, even fairly extensive ones such as this two-CD set, which includes six previously unreleased tracks and one previously unavailable alternate take among its 40 songs. In part that's because she explored several different styles during this era without really finding a home in any of them, in part that's because the quality of the recordings themselves were so erratic, and in part it's because Sony keeps putting out compilations that duplicate each other to a fair extent. About half the songs on this anthology, for instance, also appear on the most comprehensive previous Franklin/Columbia retrospective, Jazz to Soul. On its own merits, this is a fair summation of some of her more notable Columbia recordings, slightly more pop-oriented in its track selection than Jazz to Soul, and at least including something new in the handful of unissued numbers.

Anthology is singer-songwriter Carly Simon's 26th album, and first anthology album, released in November 2002. It is a two-disc set with all the songs personally picked by Simon. Over the course of the two discs, every one her studio albums (up until that point) is represented with at least one song (not including her just-released Christmas album or her 1993 opera, Romulus Hunt: A Family Opera, on which she only actually performs on one track). The booklet features numerous photographs from Simon's archives, as well as extensive liner notes by Jack Mauro, a lifelong fan of Simon's.

Greatest Hits is a compilation album released in November 2002 featuring the songs of Icelandic singer Björk. Although not all of Björk's singles are included on this collection, all of the songs on Greatest Hits were released as singles. The tracks were selected by fans through a survey on Björk's website. Greatest Hits presents the songs in descending order of most-popular votes, with the exception of "It's In Our Hands" which was a new song and appears at the end of the compilation.