Sometimes a greatest-hits collection can signal the end of an artist's career, summing up what has come before, and sometimes it can even revive a flagging artist's career whose previous albums might not have met expectations. And sometimes it can just come too early in a career to have any determining features.
Jamelia had been around for seven years at the time of the release of
Superstar: The Hits, so it could not be argued that it was too soon for a hits collection. Unfortunately, with just 11 tracks total -- two from her first album
Drama, five from her breakthrough success
Thank You, her four Top Ten singles, some of the most commercial pop hits from the mid-2000s in "Superstar," "Thank You," and "See It in a Boy's Eyes," and three singles from her previous album,
Walk with Me, including her sampled songs "Beware of the Dog" and "No More," both dominated by their background samples ("Personal Jesus" and "Golden Brown," respectively) -- it doesn't even cover her entire output of singles, mysteriously omitting her first hit, "I Do," and another of her early singles, "Boy Next Door," As
Jamelia had only had 12 hits at this point of her career, one of them being the double A-side (if they were actually still referred to as that in 2004) "DJ" with "Stop," the latter her version of the
Sam Brown hit which hadn't previously been on an album, and with less than 40 minutes of music on the CD, there was plenty of room for either a little experimentation with some new tracks, or a little more adventure than simply compiling all the singles onto one album, the best of which had been on a big seller (
Thank You) not long before. There wasn't even any new artwork or photos of the singer, but soon after the release of
Superstar: The Hits,
Jamelia was released from her contract at Parlophone and the reason for the release became obvious. This compilation became her weakest seller yet, even worse than her debut album when she was almost unknown, and spent just one week in the chart at number 55. ~ Sharon Mawer