Girls, Girls, Girls (1990)

Reducing the riches of rock's greatest post-'60s songwriter into two jam-packed volumes was a thankless job; Elvis Costello took it on himself, and even he couldn't settle on one definitive selection. So the Girls, Girls, Girls CD (47 songs) and tape versions (51 songs) are drastically different, with only 36 numbers in common. The cassettes contain a few more essential mementos, especially from Costello's later records; the CDs include more of his somber songs. But neither format has more than a couple of dubious choices, and fans who care about the difference will have their own list of personal favorites that were omitted from both. A+