Now… That’s What I Call Music! reaches its 100th edition

Now… That’s What I Call Music, the music compilation series celebrates its 100th edition later this year. To commemorate this anniversary it announced the Now 100 Awards in association with HMV and Magic Radio. This will be the first awards ceremony, with a range of pop’s biggest names including Taylor Swift, Kylie Minogue and Britney Spears.

The franchise has featured over 2,000 artists and has generated more than 120 million sales since its first edition in 1983.

Now… 99 was released in March and has shifted 328,930 copies to date, according to the Official Charts Company.

As Corinne Purtill & Dan Kopf put it, “Nothing about the “Now That’s What I Call Music!” series is cool. Not the title, which is something a dad says quietly to himself when the Eagles finally comes on, nor the overeager cover design, nor the late night infomercials that hawked them on US television.

But it is possible that when future archaeologists are piecing together the shards of our fallen civilisation, no other artefact will be as vital to establishing the evolutionary timeline of the industrialised world’s musical tastes than these battered CDs.

“Now That’s What I Call Music!”—or Now, as it’s popularly known in the UK and elsewhere—debuted in 1983 in the UK, as a partnership between music licensing giants EMI and Virgin Records.

According to legend, the name came from a 1930s poster Richard Branson spotted in an antique shop on London’s Portobello Road. (It turned out to be a fortuitous purchase in multiple ways: Branson eventually married the shop owner.)

Sources – Music Week, The Guardian, BBC and Quartzy