For anyone “cool” - i.e. long-haired boys in suede jackets - the Now! series is the epitome of cultural nullity; constructed of equal parts plastic and evil. I am personally talking about the boys of 1990, but this is how the “cool” boys have received the Now! album from its inception, in 1983, up until the present day. For “alternative” boys, the purchase of Now! is the mark of shame - the province of a rock philistine who has probably never heard Dylan's Basement Tapes, let alone read the lyrics while smoking a fag and looking thoughtful. Now! is the province of, to be frank, girls.

Because girls love Now! All my teenage girlfriends had a stack of them around their stereo - the date of the first one usually, roughly, coinciding with the onset of the menarche. A male friend once told me that, in his teenage years, he would look at a girl's Now! stack and work forwards from the earliest one to calculate her age.

“Anyone with anything later than Now 10! - the one with China in Your Hand by T'Pau - and it is probably statutory rape,” he would say, wisely. The Now! divide between the sexes is down to simple mathematics.

Boys' rock algebra seemed to consist of complex combining factors such as “what being into the band says about me”, and “how difficult records by the band are to get hold of”. Now! fails on their system. On the female system, however - which is, simply “how many big brilliant hits are there on this thing?” - Now! is triumphal. The first offering had 11 No 1 hits. Eleven! Tonnes more than Pet Sounds!

Economically, in the days before the 79p download, you could not get more pop for your money. And it is not as if the simple equation of “most hits = best album” is the only judgment criteria. Now! also works as a broad but effective era primer, too. My first, Now 17!, released in 1990 - I was a late developer - kicks off with Erasure's Blue Savannah, gives you a six-in-a-row indie-rock workout of Primal Scream, Happy Mondays, the House of Love, Inspiral Carpets, Depeche Mode and Jesus Jones, and then throws in the imperial phase of House, with Mantronix, Technotronic, Orbital and Killer by Adamski. Plus! Opposites Attract by Paula Abdul - the one in which she dances in the video with a cartoon cat.

It is far more evocative than, say, a C90 compilation tape, made by a long-haired boy in a suede jacket.

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