Back To The 80's

Back To The 80's was a compilation album series released by Sony Music in the Netherlands. Each volume of the original series contained 4 CD's in a box. The first volume was released in 1996, without volume number. It included several hits from each year of the 80's, starting with 1989 and going back to 1980. After a sales success of the inital volume, two more volumes in the regular series were released in 1997 and 1998, according to the same formula. After a short break, another volume was added to the series in 2001. With a new design, only 3 CD's and with a theme: Pop & Wave. In 2002 the first "Long Versions" volume was released. This release again consisted of 4 discs with 12" versions. Some of them were hard to find on CD. Another volume followed in 2003 and the series was concluded with a "Long Versions Live" volume in 2004. The "Long Versions" volumes can be seen as the predecessor of Ben Liebrand's "Grand 12-inches" series which were released starting end of 2003 by the same record company. In the mean time the 3 initial volumes of the Back To The 80's series have been reissued several times, with different artwork and mostly in 2CD boxes. The first re-issue series was released in 2004.