Snap! (album)

Snap! is a greatest hits album by The Jam, released on 14 October 1983, one year after the group disbanded. The double-album includes all sixteen of the band's UK singles, plus some B-sides, album tracks and rarities. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic called it "one of the greatest greatest-hits albums of all time". A shorter version, removing the 8 non-singles, was released as a single CD in 1985 as Compact Snap!.

Editions
Initial quantities of the album included a limited edition 4 track EP, Live, recorded at Wembley Arena during the farewell tour of 1982. Featuring the tracks "Get Yourself Together", "Move On Up", "The Great Depression" and "But I'm Different Now", the EP is notable for the fact that these songs were never re-issued on any other Jam compilation.

A shorter version, with 8 tracks less than the original so that it could fit on a single CD, was released in 1984 as Compact Snap!. The omitted tracks were the non-single tracks "Away from the Numbers", "Billy Hunt", "English Rose", "Mr. Clean", "The Butterfly Collector", "Thick As Thieves", "Man in the Corner Shop" and "Tales from the Riverbank". The result is that Compact Snap! is a collection of all The Jam's singles, with the exception of "Just Who Is the 5 O'Clock Hero?". The CD was repackaged in 1990 as All The Choice Cuts for the Australian market as part of the Polydor Startrax series. Compact Snap! has a similar track listing to The Very Best of The Jam with "Smithers-Jones" replacing "Just Who Is the 5 O'Clock Hero?".

Universal Music re-released the album in its entirety on CD in 2006, initial copies including the limited edition live EP. Cover Artwork by Simon Halfon

Track listing

 * Limited edition bonus EP (all tracks previously unreleased and recorded live at Wembley Arena, 2 & 3 December 1982)
 * 1) "Move On Up"
 * 2) "Get Yourself Together"
 * 3) "The Great Depression"
 * 4) "But I'm Different Now"

Charts
Snap! spent 30 weeks on the UK album charts, which debuted and peaked at No. 2 for two weeks. The shorter version, Compact Snap!, also charted in the UK, peaking at No. 39 in July 2005.