Sound System [1984]

Sound System, along with Expressions and Street Beat, are K-Tel contemporary pop hits collections that were released in February 1984. (We'll probably feature Expressions next time out to finish the triptych.) The fourteen-song Sound System, subtitled Today's Top Hits, is available on vinyl, cassette, and 8-track tape.

This K-Tel album should not be confused with Herbie Hancock's 1984 Grammy-winning album, Sound-System, the follow-up to 1983's Grammy-winning Future Shock. (The Grammy category Hancock won two years in a row was Best R&B Instrumental Performance.)

While the cassette kept the vinyl's tracklist intact, the 8-track shuffled the songs yet still couldn't prevent the big KA-CHUNK! during Spandau Ballet's "Gold" as the program changed from three to four midsong. The 8-track also featured more bare-bones cover art compared to the vinyl (below).

While I did not buy the album upon its initial release, I eventually picked up a clean, flat (not warped) copy in the mid-'90s.

The majority of the tracks were favorites at the time of their 1983 release, and I already had them on their original albums. (I've included the 1983 Hideaway 200 rankings of the nine songs that made the list in the K-Tel Scale box score below.)

By 1984, K-Tel featured fewer tracks per album — they were using the full-length single or album versions rather than creating their own edits to fit as many songs as possible on each album. Let's see if the K-Tel Scale is even operational - it has been six years since we last fired it up.

SOUND SYSTEM [1984]					29.46
			Billboard Top 40s
			POP	ROCK	CLUB	AC	CB	#
7/83	(She's) Sexy + 17	Stray Cats	5	2			4	104
8/83	One Thing Leads To Another	The Fixx	4	2	14		6	24
4/83	She's A Beauty	The Tubes	10	1			8	35
5/83	Cuts Like A Knife	Bryan Adams	15	6			27	133
8/83	Don't Forget To Dance	The Kinks	29	16		23	34
8/83	King Of Pain	The Police	3	1		33	5	13
7/83	Far From Over	Frank Stallone	10		(43)		10
8/83	Heart and Soul	Huey Lewis and the News	8	1			10	182
9/83	Love Is A Battlefield	Pat Benatar	5	1	(41)		4	178
10/83	Souls	Rick Springfield	23				31
6/83	Take Me To Heart	Quaterflash	14	6		28	15	180
2/83	Mr. Roboto	Styx	3	3			1	192
11/83	Gold	Spandau Ballet	29		8	17	29
10/83	If I'd Been The One	38 Special	19	1			23

Not too shabby at all. Every track is a Top 30 hit, and only Rick Springfield failed to cross over to another Billboard chart. Five Number Ones on the Rock chart is impressive, and the 4 Club chart crossovers are surprising. The K-Tel Scale score of 29.46 for Sound System beats the 27.63 Street Beat score and is also nearly two points above the average score after the seventy-six(!) other K-Tel albums we've featured here on The K-Tel Kollection. 
There are only eight(!) more K-Tel albums left on the shelf to review. We've got a few Ronco ones we might feature, as well as a few more K-Tel collections from the UK. Next time out, we'll probably feature A Collection of Today's Soft Sounds: