My obsession with Blondie parallels my obsession with tennis -- I'm still on board, but not nearly the obsessed fan I once was. (I decided to actually grow up a bit, only to find out that the majority of people younger than me have decided you can stay a child forever.) With that in mind, it was only last night that I discovered there were two European bonus tracks -- "The End of the World" and "Sleeping Giant" -- on my No. 1 band's 2011 album, "Panic of Girls," which I reviewed HERE. (I like 'em both.) I thought I had them all since I had the bonus tracks "Horizontal Twist," "Mirame" and (later) "Please Please Me" -- just goes to show you what kind of super-fan I am ... now!
That said, now that we're in the post-physical-CD era, I sure wish bonus tracks would somehow become standardized. It's gotten to the point that you can't even review an album without having a thousand asterisks next to what you write. If you asked me what I thought of the version of Madonna's "Rebel Heart" that is considered the standard album, I'd give it one star. But if you let me include bonus tracks from various editions, I'd upgrade it to three. Don't get me wrong -- I love extra material. But maybe the digital world needs to sell bonus tracks as part of singles again so as to not muddy the water of what constitutes an album. It probably wouldn't work, given the desire to keep singles cheap, but someone with more knowledge of marketing should figure something out besides five versions of the same album.
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