A few weeks ago, I got a Spotify notification that said the 30th anniversary deluxe edition of the album What’s The Story Morning Glory by Oasis was releasing on my birthday with five new tracks. As a huge Oasis fan, I was super excited and couldn’t wait for it to be released. Would the new tracks be official releases of fan-circulated songs? More B-sides? Entirely new tracks that were reworked?

      You can imagine how I felt when I pulled the album up and found four unplugged versions of songs from the album that I had already heard.  Okay, fine. There was also an unplugged version of “Acquiesce”, one of their most popular songs. Who cares? Why would I ever listen to this?

     This experience got me thinking; what’s the point of deluxe editions? One would expect that they allow the artist or label to release remastered songs, demos or live cuts, and rare tracks. In fact, my favourite deluxe album, Weezer’s Pinkerton, includes unreleased songs that rival the main album’s tracklist (especially “Tragic Girl” and “Long Time Sunshine”). And yet, this Oasis deluxe doesn’t even feature remasters of the songs. It just includes the songs that were already on Spotify and have millions of streams along with these nothing-burgers.

     You might then say that deluxe albums are for anniversaries. The Oasis deluxe did come out on the thirtieth-year anniversary of the album, after all. Surely, it’s meant to reinvigorate people’s excitement. Nope. Nowadays, deluxes are released barely even a year after the original comes out. Did we really need the A Great Chaos deluxe ten months after the original? All it does is add bonus tracks. At that point, drop an EP or compilation album, Ken! Is the EP dead?

     At the end of the day, there’s nothing easier for a record label to do than keep riding the wave of the new album (or that one super amazing record everyone loves) by continuing to rerelease it to garner interest. But half the time, the songs are quite literally the same tracks as on the other deluxe edition. How will that garner more listeners? Why wouldn’t you put a shiny new label on a song and get free streams? 

     The concept of a deluxe album is increasingly becoming less of a celebration of a classic and more of a counterintuitive cash grab. It’s time to stop before there are 365 editions per album released every year.