Customer Reviews
Very Dated - By: J. Roberts, 06 Apr 2008 
Besides the obvious highlight, 'Enola Gay', most of this is mediocre 80's synth, grating & dated-sounding.
The synth grates after a while, & the likes of 'Messages' is repetitive & hokey, without even any lyrics to drag it above average. 'Souveneir sounds like something you would hear playingin B&Q or General George, utterly banal.
The vocals are unpleasant, & the rest of the album plays outin the same way, so inoffensive it's offensive. Droning synth-by-numbers.
Surprisingly good! - By: Iceni Peasant, 18 Jun 2006 
Until recently I knew nothing much about OMD. I had heard of them & that was it. Then I found up an old 7" vinyl of "Maid Of Orleans" & I was totally intrigued....I also wanted to hear the songin full without the needle jumping over a large scratch!
This CD was my first choice, hoping to learn more about OMD's style of music. It IS a great overview with the range of ways they presented their music. While feeling very 1980's-synthersizer-age, there are some excellent tracks on the CD.
Arguably the best tracks include "Maid Of Orleans" & tracks like "We Love You", & "Genetic Engineering". There are always clever lyrical references, catchy rhythms & overall it's a nice album to listen toin the background.
I was really unsure about buying an entire album of OMD, but for the price this has been an excellent value purchase. If like me you'd never really heard their music, now is the time to try!
Magnificent and timeless collection. - By: , 03 Feb 2006 OMD are quite possibly my favourite band ever. Why? Simply put, this band can write intelligent songs & accompany them with sweet, unusual & powerful melodies. It also makes me sad knowing great music like this is ignoredin favor of the terrible mainstream rubbish you findin the shops these days.
OMD were a very busy bandin the 1980s, releasing hit after hit after hit, beginningin 1979 with "Electricity" which secured a place on the top 100 list. Shortly after the release of their self-titled debut album, OMD enjoyed greater success with "Maid of Orleans" & "Enola Gay" while "Souvenir" became their biggest hit yet, peaking at #3 on the UK charts.
In America, OMD found moderate success with "Soin Love" & the ballad "If You Leave" which was included on the Pretty In Pink soundtrack. The latter track is also featured on a new commercial, so listen out for it.
Music lovers should have this CDin their collection. It really is one of the best albums you'll ever hear. At first you may find Andy McClusky's vocals a bit unbearable, but I recommend this gem nevertheless. Paul Humphreys, Andy McClusky, Martin Cooper & Malcolm Holmes are going to reform this year, so I'm looking very forward to a DVD release.
Representative of the highs and lows - By: chadwholovedme, 14 Nov 2005 
In many reviews of the ‘best of OMD’ people have charted the growing ‘sophistication’ of their music, from the debut to ‘Pacific Age’ Orchestral Manoeuvresin the Dark refined their technique, with the odd misstep like ‘Dazzle Ships’, set aside clichéd politics & kraftwerk-ian idealsin favour of tight melody & pop logic. Admittedly from one point of view this is true. ‘Best of OMD’ contains some great pop. Rarely has a best of summarised a groups rise & fall, not only musically butin terms of popularity. In their early years they found success producing new wave electronics & experimental sounds capes, but ironically as the group sort commercialism, interest (in the UK) vanished.
Tracks 1 to 10 & 16 are singles from OMD’s first 5 albums. ‘Electricity’ is a new wave staple, a bouncy, catchy classic. ‘Enola Gay’ is even better; a great memorable pop song, with a melody that is impossible to forget, ‘Joan of Arc’ & ‘Telegraph’ both continuein a similar vein. In between the unabashed pop music are songs that are grander & reflective. ‘Maid of Orleans’ especially is a brilliant heartbreaking masterpiece, & one of the most un-formulaic songs ever to become a hit.
‘Tesla Girls’, ‘Locomotion’ & ‘Talking Loud & Clear’ are from OMD’s fifth & as it would turn out, last great album ‘Junk Culture’, these are allin essence typical OMD but with a commercial & upbeat take on their sound. For some reason ‘Genetic Engineering’ from 1983’s ‘Dazzle Ships’ is out of place it’s possibly the oddest single of their career & takenin context with tracks 1-10 it fits nicely. Also it’s a shame that ‘Never Turn Away’ isn’t here, it was the final single from ‘Junk Culture’.
After Junk Culture OMD chose to go all out & make lightweight bubbly pop. Tracks 11 onwards feature OMD’s commercial side. ‘Soin Love’ & ‘Secret’ are passable pop songs. The rest is practically un-listenable, full of jarring synths where gorgeous choir sounds once appeared, Andy McCluskey’s voice once passionate if a bit screechy now wobbles all over the place, this is most painful on ‘If You Leave’, apparently a big hitin the USA.
It’s really sad, because without the later half, this Cd would have sat well next to New Order’s Substance or Depeche Mode’s singles albums. Early OMD did pop & alternative music brilliantly, but dip into any of the first 5 albums & you’ll hear their real legacy, music that is as experimental & avant-garde as Neu! Kraftwerk, Bowie, Eno or Joy Division, & really worth seeking out.
‘Best of OMD’ is the best career retrospective available, the ‘OMD singles’ isn’t really worth your time since it drops much of the early materialin favour of their 90s output, which to be blunt isn’t up to much. If you’re new to OMD this is a good overview or you’ll at least get a good idea which period you enjoy.
Influential yet underappreciated music - By: Daniel Jolley, 20 Nov 2004 
I've always looked upon The Best of OMD as the most disposable CDin my collection, so I thought it would be fun to review it, as a change of pace if nothing else. I can't begin to say how many years it had been since I listened to this album. It's actually a bit serendipitous, as just recently I've begun trying to get a handle on this whole "synthpop" thing, never remembering I had a musical retrospective of one of the more influential synthpop groups close at hand all the while. I still can't tell you exactly what synthpop is, at its simplest, it's pop music played primarily on synthesizers. To me, though, synthpop primarily translates to musical memories of the 1980s, & I've never made a secret of my love for all things 80s, especially the music.
Orchestral Manoeuversin the Dark had a long & successful career, but they achieved mega-success with only one song. If You Leave, from the soundtrack of that seminal 80s film Prettyin Pink, towers over the musical landscape of the 1980s. If I had to pick one tune that represented the decade of my youth, I would probably choose If You Leave. I'm still perplexed why the song never rose above #4 on the US charts. I originally bought this CD because of that one awesome song, & this probably explains why I didn't really "get" this music at the time, especially since a majority of the tracks date back to the group's earlier years. OMD first appeared on the music scenein 1979 with the song Electricity, a catchy but rather ephemeral track that managed to win them a recording contract. Their early recordings are hard for me to classify; I believe Enola Gay made the top tenin the UKin 1980, but this song always seems to hang aroundin my head to the point of being annoying after I listen to it. Tracks such as Joan of Arc & Maid of Orleans demonstrate the growing musical maturity of the group, though.
OMD began to hit their stride with the release of the album Junk Culturein 1984. Tesla Girls,in particular, is a much tighter, certainly much more energetic song from the somewhat experimental products that had come before. This song almost demands to be danced to (but not by me, of course) & had what earlier tracks did not - pop appeal. Locomotion has a more pop-oriented sound, as well, but its good points are all but nullified by the constant repetition of a certain silly phrase. Talking Loud & Clear, a third track from Junk Culture, also suffers from repetition & a stultifying level of musical restraint. The group's pop-oriented synthpop sound continued with the album Crushin 1985, with OMD finally finding significant successin America with the single Soin Love. Secret taps into the kind of teenaged lovesickness that fueled much of the best of 80s music; back then, a crush could actually be an innocent albeit heart-wrenching thing that basically defined adolescence. For the first time, OMD was beginning to sound (to me, anyway) like the group that would go on to record the era-defining song If You Leave.
A defining sense of melancholy seemed to characterize all of OMD's music, from weighty songs such as Forever Live & Die to pop-oriented tracks such as the excellent Dreaming. This collection's final two tracks, 12" versions of We Love You & La Femme Accident, close things out with great energy, but the songs you take away from this album are those more poignant offerings from the mid-80s, great tracks such as Soin Love & If You Leave. Listening to this album now, I think I appreciate the music much more than I did all those years ago. OMD may not have hit the charts all that often, but theirs is a typically 80s sound that helped define the decade & did much to shape the development of synthpop. Needless to say, I am no longer inclined to look upon this CD asin any way disposable.
