As the music industry continues to crumble, more artists are releasing “deluxe” editions of their latest albums. The quality of the bonus material varies from release to release, with some artists choosing to include dozens of additional songs and others stretching the definition of deluxe to mean one extra track. Here are your best bets.
Lady Gaga
“The Fame Monster”
As the mainstream continues to go gaga for Gaga, the ever savvy icon-in-the-making knows how to catch her die-hard monsters and her newfound Midwest moms in one fell swoop; by packaging her new 9-song album with the album that got her to where she is now. “The Fame Monster” is 24 songs for $14.
Weezer
“Raditude”
This one is a little hard to give as a gift, as the most deluxe of the deluxe editions is a $20 iTunes pass, which automatically downloads the album, and then continues to download new additional bonus tracks each week. We now have 31 Weezer “Raditude” items in our library, including videos, remixes, covers, an MGMT/Lady Gaga mashup and videos of live performances of some of their best “Pinkerton” tunes.
Shakira;
“She Wolf”
The regular version of “She Wolf” is $11. For the price of one cup of coffee you could feed a starving child or get three bonus songs and four bonus videos. Is it worth the $3 extra? If you love the title track like we do, then you’ll coo “ow-ooo” at the title track’s five incarnations which includes a live version, a Spanish version and a 16-minute video on the making of the “She Wolf” video.
Taylor Swift
“Fearless”
We’re coming around on Ms. Swift, ever since her killer command of “SNL” hosting/performing duties earlier in the fall, and this bonus edition of the album she released last year that won her so much acclaim and Kanye-troversy features six bonus songs and 10 videos! And it’s only five bucks more than the original album.
Jay-Z
“The Blueprint 3”
While this deluxe edition isn’t as deluxe as many of the others, it’s worth the extra $6 for the bonus videos, which include the epic “Run This Town” with Rihanna and Kanye West, if only to encourage major artists to keep shooting high budget music videos.
