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The Best Albums K-Tel Never Made 1976-1978

He has posted more classic K-Tel albums from the Seventies and Eighties to YouTube - complete with all the clicks and pops some of you may remember - than any other uploader but hidden in plain sight among those sentimental posts are Brandon Hixson's original K-Tel inspired compilations. Brandon has dubbed these albums, uploaded from CD-Rs unearthed from his personal archives, The Best Albums K-Tel Never Made and he was kind enough to send The K-Tel Kollection an advance notice, including hi-res cover art, of the latest wave a couple of weeks back. We'll be featuring these unique albums a few at a time, in somewhat chronological order, sharing the original YouTube links so you can show Brandon some support as well as exclusive Spotify recreations of each album just for fun.
The first three songs on Chart Explosion '76 rank among our most favorite songs of all-time. And the album closes with a pair of Number Ones in "Love Will Keep Us Together" and "December 1963 (Oh What A Night)" that we also love very, very much, earning even more high marks from us. Listening to Chart Explosion '76 most definitely gives one that classic K-Tel or Super Hits of the '70s vibe. Brandon keeps the tracklist faithful to other K-Tel albums of the era by cramming in 20 tracks from 1975-1976.
YouTube     Spotify
Next up is Super '76, another album with twenty songs, though this time out Brandon notes that it is a 2 Record Set. So authentic! As good as parts of Chart Explosion '76 were, we like Super '76 a little lot better. There were about six tracks on the prior album that I might be inclined to skip upon future listenings but Super '76 will get played top to bottom every time. It truly lives up to its title and with so many of our personal favorites included it almost feels like it was made just for us. Though it's a collection of hits specifically from the week of October 9, 1976, and definitely not based on the WLS chart above, Super '76 is going to get lots of airtime out by the pool this Summer.
Another specific week's hits are featured on That's Rock 'N' Roll. Containing 20 tracks from the chart dated August 13, 1977, Brandon's mix is all over the place which is not a slight in the least, that's just how Top 40 was back then: pop, rock, country and soul could all be heard shoulder to shoulder on the same station and it was wonderful. Shaun Cassidy's cover of the Eric Carmen tune that gives the album its title is an all-time favorite of ours as are The Sylvers, Heatwave, Donna Summer and Crystal Gayle tracks. Who are we kidding? We like all most of the songs. 
Only sixteen songs this time around but what a selection on FM '78, with cover boy Andrew Gold kicking off the festivities with "Lonely Boy" and cover gal Yvonne Elliman bringing down the curtain with "If I Can't Have You". Raise your hand if you can remember ever hearing Kayak's "I Want You To Be Mine" before today? We can but only because we included it in our Spotify playlist eight days ago. Because it's a K-Tel facsimile, you kind of have to go with single edits but a few of these songs are best heard in their longer album or disco versions.

The next chapter in The Best Albums K-Tel Never Made will cover 1979-1981.


Check out Brandon's earlier Albums K-Tel Never Made HERE and HERE.


To see another really good K-Tel album that should have been, go HERE.

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