Where some might see the culling of Can’s Singles as a cash grab, the reality is that the discovery of the German experimentalists by new generations of fans and musicians has maintained a popularity that’s hopefully been beneficial to the band’s surviving members (i.e., publishing money, assuming they still own those rights). The list of artists who have been inspired by, covered and sampled Can is off the charts. When you consider that Kanye West, Earl Sweatshirt and A Tribe Called Quest—among many others—have sliced and diced pieces of its discography and the potential for the band to be opened up to a new epoch of listeners, the press material supporting The Singles rightly posits the question, “Where do you start?”
The easy answer is from the beginning, with 1969’s Monster Movie, and keep going to 1989’s Rite Time, or until Can runs out of ideas (which doesn’t happen). The Singles is as good a starting point as any, as it highlights the diversity that spanned the band’s entire career. All the classics are present and accounted for: the group’s most popular hit, the disco-leaning “I Want More,” the playfully psychedelic “Turtles Have Short Legs,” the oft-sampled “Halleluwah,” the slinky “Vitamin C” and 19 other examples of musical freedom and creative excavation.
With Can, it’s not a matter of trying to follow a historical flowchart or narrative; their canon rarely, if ever, had wasted space, and the Midas touch of innovation it employed makes it still sound like a band from the future.
—Kevin Stewart-Panko
