Classic Compilation Albums Review: Hit Express, by K-Tel Records 1982

Hit Express, by K-Tel Records, 1983: 

April 2025

Scott Coates

Hello Music Fans,

Without too much background, here is my pick for April 2025, keeping on with the compilation theme. It was released in 1982 by KTel. This is the first compilation that popped into my head when Darren mentioned this theme. I may have had others prior but I would have been 9-years-old and distinctly remember having this one and listening to it in PEI over and over. 

It seems there were different versions of this released – in the US, Canada and maybe others, but this is the Canadian version. I played the shit out of this as a kid.

• You can read about it a bit more on this page but need to scroll down to the Canadian version.
• Listen on iTunes
• Listen on YouTube

Review

What an experience with this pick. Didn’t realize our ages and one person wasn’t born when this came out. A couple people discovered songs they have never heard. And most seemed to enjoy a surprising amount of it. This made me feel real good. Everyone had fun listening to Hit Express and found the flow of songs made sense, there were only a couple of stinkers, and most of the tracks were enjoyed many times and have found their way onto playlists.

We all gave it a score of 4 so that was easy and a ton of fun!

So, what are you waiting for? Get on the Hit Express!!

Alain’s picking for May is the Spawn movie soundtrack

There’s no backstory here, other than I just stumbled across this soundtrack one night while I was out walking the dog and thought it would be fun for us to explore. I have been listening to lots of trip-hop lately. We’ve reviewed trip-hop albums in the past with artists like Massive Attack, and Thievery Corporation immediately coming to mind. On this particular night, I was listening to the Sneaker Pimps – another great trip-hop group, when the Spotify algorithm played one of their songs in collaboration with Marilyn Manson. The song is called Long Hard Road out of Hell, it was unlike what I had come to expect from Sneaker Pimps, so I took out my phone to look at what I was listening to and noticed the album art featured the 1997 Spawn movie promo materials. This prompted me to explore further, because I even though I’ve never seen the movie, I’m familiar with it, because I was a fan of the comic books as a kid. (Shoutout to Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, who is also from Calgary.)

Visit again at the end of May to hear reasons and history of the pick, what we thought and compare!

Wikipedia

Spotify

Apple Music