If the record business wants to continue doing business the way they've been doing it for the past 20 years, one of their only hopes is fetish commodities. Box sets have always been a strong seller for the majors, with sets for artists such as Bob Dylan, Bob Marley and David Bowie, and labels such as Stax, Chess and Atlantic being huge sellers.

With the saturation of the CD catalogue market (if you haven't already bought what was available in the last 20 years, you're not going to buy it over the next year). this means the majors have to get more clever with their catalogue exploitation.

Which brings us to the Blondie Singles Box. This really nice package is a box of 15 CDs representing Blondie's singles from the Chrysalis label. Each single has the original artwork in a cardboard sleeve (as Virgin did with the Stones albums) and a booklet.

The booklet is where the set fails, since it mostly consists of package shots of Blondie albums and singles, and pictures of Debbie Harry in her prime. It wouldn't have taken much effort to buy some single chart history and commission an essay from a rock magazine hack to put these singles in perspective. After all, Blondie singles encompass the commercialization of New York City CBGBs punk rock, moving into disco and Giorgio Moroder's Euro-electro, the first introduction of rap outside of NYC and more (See, I could do a fast outline, it's not that hard and the booklet is the cheapest part of a box set, and the part that wins awards).

Since the singles aren't really convenient to listen to all at once (15 CDs, 43 songs), it really comes down to the packaging. Which they got three-quarters right. This is a nice collectable, but really could have been done better, but it is disappointing to fans and collectors.