This compilation says nothing to me about my life as a Smiths fan. A stupid cover, with Charles Hawtrey pointlessly standing in for Morrissey, an annoying order, because someone else thought of it, although thought might be too strong a word, and no inclusion of a tacky badge, which would at least have been sadly funny. The fact that it's apparently digitally remastered might be a selling point, although the tracks still sound like a strange array of 78s sent back from the 22nd century. A digitally recast Smiths is as much an attraction as a coloured Citizen Kane. The glamour of The Smiths resides in the relationship between the songs and the imagination, not the songs and the ear.

The Very Best Of... is Singles (1993) with a few additions. If the idea is to introduce the group, who it cannot be denied were as special as thought, to a bunch of new boys - and the odd girl - not born when The Smiths began to Smith, why not do a Smith-like equivalent of the recent Pet Shop Boys reissues. Something that gets inside the spirit of the group, that doesn't just leech on their magnificence and spew up a lazy juggle of tracks, but that confirms their uniquentess by imagining a unque way of repositioning them. It's always particularly disturbing when original thinkers are processed in such an unoriginal way. A repackage - repackage! - that is treated as a work of art, that represents the songs in an intelligent, celebratory fashion, that doesn't look like some half-hearted cash-in. That could be treated with respect. This thing doesn't even have the budget quality of some old Decca World Of that is truly an introduction because it only costs a fiver.

This thing just goes through the kind of artless anti-romantic emotions that The Smiths loathed. The kind of thinking that leads to a compilation like this is exactly the kind of thinking that stops music like this developing in the first place. The Smiths emerged in the independent sector. After a series of takeovers and buy-outs, their work ends up owned by a big corporation. It's chopped up into pieces again and again. The feeling is this type of music might appeal to fans of Travis and Stereophonics, even though that music is closer to The Bachelors than to The Smiths. They might both use a guitar, but then Don DeLillo and Nick Hornby both use a word processor.

The thing that sums up this thing lies at the end of the press release, which has previously announced that, after The Smiths, bedsit angst was never the same again, which makes you wonder what it was like before The Smiths. It makes you wonder what it's like now. Actually, it makes you wonder what the fuck it is. It then states Warner Strategic Marketing UK has now brought out The Very Best Of The Smiths. It might as well have said that Barclays Bank has now brought out The Very Best Of The Smiths. At least then we might have got our tacky badge and a cheap loan.

Paul Morley