Customer Reviews

NOW 30

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have many titles in the NOW series- this one is better than NOW 29 but still not great. However, it is worth $9.99.

Not a bad song on this CD, great to dance to, this is a great CD for a teen dance party.

I have pretty much all the newer "Now" CD's, at least from 16 up to 30, and this one ranks well. Not my absolute favorite, but it included most of the recent songs I would have wanted. I always recommend these CD's because it makes it so I don't have to buy every artist's album to get the top music. It's a great buy!!

Highlights:
1. Just Dance Lady Gaga featuring Colby O'Donis
2. Womanizer Britney Spears
3. Keeps Gettin' Better Christina Aguilera
4. Let It Rock Kevin Rudolf featuring Lil Wayne
5. Heartless Kanye West
6. Miss Independent Ne-Yo
11. Crush David Archuleta
13. Gives You Hell The All-American Rejects
14. Light On David Cook
15. 18 Days Saving Abel
16. Gotta Be Somebody Nickelback
17. Thinking of You Katy Perry
18. I'm Yours Jason Mraz
19. Love Story Taylor Swift

If you're looking for a nice compilation of fairly current hit tunes from the radio, one way to go is the NOW series. "NOW That's What I Call Music 30" is my favorite of the several NOW CDs that I own. Like most CDs, this one contains skippers, too many for me. However, the number of songs that I really like still make it worth the price.

If you're like me and just barely recognize various names and, maybe--maybe not, the name of the song, then Amazon is a great source for your purchase. Here you can go to the sampler section and listen to as many songs as you want before you buy with confidence that you will enjoy enough of the songs to make your purchase worthwhile.

Having said that, I can also say that, once you are familiar with the NOW series, you can still buy with confidence. There must be a wide variety of NOW songs to appeal to the top listening categories. I don't like heavy metal (as I understand the term), but there is always a representative on the NOWs (I think---loud buzzing guitars with consideration going to noise rather than melody, right?). However, I can skip that one and the rap one and the heavy country one and so on. Even at half the CD, I am pleased.

There are eight songs on this CD that simply make my day, especially on the way home from work. Rousing dance music! Heartbreak! Gotcha song! Oh, some titles? In CD order:

"Just dance" by Lady Gaga
"Womanizer" by Britney Spears (Ha ha for Britney!)
"Keeps Gettin' Better" by Christina Aguilera
"Let It Rock" by Kevin Rudolf

"Heartless" by Kanye West--My absolute favorite on the CD. I have listened to this song SO MANY times that if this were an LP, the groove would be missing. The song should not work, at least not to an almost senior citizen, librarian. The beat is so basic, his breathing is amateurish, the multiple tracks, each with Kanye should be annoying, but for me, all the components work so well that I must listen several times every time I get to this song. What is wonderful about this song is that I understand every word and can sing along at the top of my voice (if I want to).

"I Hate This Part" by The Pussycat Dolls
"I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz--what a delightful, happy-making song! Thank you, Jason!
"Love Story" by Taylor Swift

One negative, but necessary aspect: Most songs on CDs can be purchased separately. The NOW CDs come as complete packages. Single songs are unavailable for sale.

Overall, this is a great buy!

My brother bought this album and I decided to check out the case one day to see What the album had to offer. It had a pretty good list, 20 songs total the likes of All American Rejects(Give's You Hell), Kanye West(Heartless), Kevin Rudolph & Lil Wayne(Let It Rock), Katy Perry(Thinking Of You), and many more. Its a great album and worth the money!

Even though there are really no duds on this album, some of the tracks seem a little inferior compared with previous Now compilations. And while some of the tracks have been around for several months, this album is still great as a whole. Here are the chart positions on the Billboard Hot 100 for the tracks:

Just Dance-#1
Womanizer-#1
Keeps Gettin' Better-#7
Let It Rock-#5
Heartless-#2
Miss Independent-#7/#1 R&B and Hip-Hop
Green Light-#24
Rehab-#18
I Hate This Part-#11
Sober-#15
Crush-#2
About You Now-#47
Gives You Hell-#4
Light On-#17
18 Days-Did not chart/#10 Modern Rock
Gotta Be Somebody-#10
Thinking Of You-#29
I'm Yours-#6
Love Story-#4
Sweet Thing-#30/#1 Country

Total Time-75:34

Downloads-
GREEN RIVER ORDINANCE-Come On
MY FAVORITE HIGHWAY-Say So
OWL CITY-Rainbow Veins
SHILOH-Operator (A Girl Like Me)
KRISTA-Temporary Insanity

Videos-
LIFEHOUSE-Broken/ 16 FRAMES-Back Again
FAMILY FORCE FIVE-Radiator/ WHITE TIE AFFAIR-Candle (Sick and Tired)

Love almost every song on this album and here are some of my favs:

1- Lady Gaga Just Dance
2- Britney Spears- Womanizer
3- Kanye West-Heartless
4- Taylor Swift Love Story

and to everyone who's going to gripe about oh well that not their new song or that song is so old, do you realize how long it takes for them to get licenses and permission from EACH ARTIST to put their song on the CD? By the time it comes out its obiviously going to be older song! geez quit your nitpicking and be thankful that they even made the album.

If you are into the current top 10 type of music and you don't all ready own most of them, then this is a great deal for you. There is a great app on Bing that is called top 100 which gives you access to all this music so check that out to. Just loaded it on my iphone is cool. You get top 100 songs of every year. Voice Lessons To Go v.1-4 The Complete Set

Well, as with any Now! compilation, you pretty much know what you're getting the minute you buy it because you've heard most of the songs on the radio already. This Now!, though, was a little harder for me to rate. Let me explain why.

First of all, Now! has that reputation of offering songs whose popularity had already peaked a couple of months earlier. But Now! 30 goes seemingly out of its way to offer hits from a past era. I actually thought that, at least with Now! 29, the hits were somewhat recent. (With a few exceptions.) But this time, good grief..."Just Dance"? That single was released nearly a year ago (April 8). "Womanizer" and "Miss Independent" aren't even the current singles for their respective artists--that would be "Circus" and "Mad." (Although by now, even "Circus" might not be considered the current single.) And "I'm Yours"? Jason Kidd was still on the Nets when that song came out! From that perspective, "Now! 30" is even more "Then! 30" than usual, thus meriting a 2 or 3 star rating.

...Nevertheless, the songs on Now! 30 are quite strong. Aforementioned "I'm Yours" should've been on a long time ago, approaching an unprecedented full year on the Billboard Hot 100. "Gotta Be Somebody" is one of Nickelback's strongest singles, "Green Light" is a great dance song, and Now! 30 is the only place you can get an edited version of the fantastic "Keeps Gettin' Better" by Christina Aguilera. For this reason--and the fact that I'm okay with all of the tracks except for "Sober" and "Thinking of You"--I would rate this as one of my favorite Now! albums.

Complicating this further is the abundance of free content with the CD. The link leads you to 5 free songs, 4 free videos, and 2 pictures. This is especially cool because one of the free videos is by Family Force 5 (ever hear "Love Addict", anyone?). Unfortunately, the videos are streamable, but not downloadable--unless I'm doing something wrong, I couldn't do anything with the videos but watch them. (Of course, there's always RealPlayer's "Download Video" option, but...)

Overall, because of the (belated) strong choice of songs and abundance of free content, I give this a 4 out of 5. But then you know if you love this already...so if you like the list, get it!