Natural History: The Very Best of Talk Talk

Natural History: The Very Best of Talk Talk is a 1990 greatest hits album by Talk Talk. It collects songs that the band released under EMI between 1982 and 1988.

Reception

The compilation spent 21 weeks on the UK Albums Chart, peaking at #3,<ref name="guinness">Tim Rice, Paul Gambaccini, and Jonathan Rice, The Guinness Book of British Hit Albums, 7th ed. (Guinness World Records Limited, 1996).</ref> and went on to sell over one million copies worldwide.<ref name="neiss">James Neiss, "Talk Talk Template:Webarchive," Record Collector, December 1991.</ref> The North American version appended two live bonus tracks. A companion collection of the band's music videos was released in July 1990.

Production and re-releases

EMI released the compilation without the band's supervision. Talk Talk leader Mark Hollis said, "A compilation album is not my idea of an album. I don't like compilation albums and I didn't like that one. It certainly wasn't the selection of tracks I would have liked even if there had to be one. But, at the end of the day, they had every right to do it so . . ."<ref name="sutherland">Steve Sutherland, "Talk Talk: Silencing the Scams Template:Webarchive," Melody Maker, September 1991.</ref> In light of Natural History's success, the remix album History Revisited was released in 1991. Talk Talk sued EMI for remixing their material without permission. Though the collection contains no new material, it does have the non-LP 1983 single, "My Foolish Friend", which had never appeared on a full-length release before. On 12 March 2007 the album was reissued with a bonus DVD of their music videos. Two bonus tracks were also included from the 1999 live release London 1986.

Credits

• James Marsh – cover art