Taiwan:

2-CD set:

Released:

June 1992

1. Big in Japan - 3:54 ^(1/*)
2. Sounds Like a Melody - 4:29 ^(1/7/*)
3. Sensations - 3:58 ^(4/10/*)
4. The Mysteries of Love - 3:34 ^(2/7/*)
5. Lassie Come Home - 6:58 ^(4/7/**)
6. Jerusalem - 3:35 ^(6/**)
7. Dance With Me - 4:08 ^(5/7/**)
8. For a Million - 6:09 ^(2/***)
9. A Victory of Love - 4:13 ^(3/7/*)
10. The Jet Set - 3:40 ^(3/7/*)
11. Red Rose - 4:38 ^(4/8/**)
12. Romeos - 4:52 ^(2/8/**)
13. Summer Rain - 4:10 ^(2/**)
14. Forever Young - 3:45 ^(1/*)
15. Big in Japan [culture mix] - 6:08 ^(1/11/*)

Notes:

Alphaville's official greatest-hits collection. The inlay quite prominently features Frank Mertens, who had long since left the band, alongside Ricky, Bernhard and Marian.

The cassette version omits "Sensations", "Red Rose" and "Big in Japan (culture mix)" (this last was released as a single to coincide with the release of the album).

The cover reproduces the covers of The Breathtaking Blue, Forever Young (the stone face cover, rather than the group photo), "Romeos" (for some reason titled Songlines) and Afternoons in Utopia (the WEA release with the album title on the right). The Taiwanese release of the album features a slightly different cover.


Also released as part of a 2-CD box set with Forever Young.

• An article from the First Harvest press pack.

The CD inlay includes the lyrics for the album, with a comment from Alphaville following many of the songs:

Big in Japan:
"Making music is one thing... But the other things around it, they are really, really strange. Absolutely the opposite of real life."
Bernhard

Sounds Like a Melody
"I think we're more film-makers - and Alphaville is the shooting location for our music."
Echolette

Sensations
"Sometimes people used to say, 'Have they all gone crazy now? Talking with dolphins and all that!!' But I think that once we've learned the language of the dolphins - this mutual approach - that could be the moment of significant change in our messed up civilization."
Marian

The Mysteries of Love
"Mysteries deals with one of these impossible dreams, the end of the Iron Curtain. Originally we planned to release the single with a photo of a piece of wall graffiti, but when the wall really came down and the dust settled, the piece of wall had vanished from our single cover, too. Only a man was there, smoking his pipe in an aquarium. Strange, isn't it?"
Bernhard

Lassie Come Home
"Lassie is something like an archetype of the lost. Her symbolic power always had some kind of comfort for me in this lost world."
Marian

Jerusalem
"One day we were given the sketch for a theatre play, for which we were supposed to write the soundtrack. It's the story of a man, who at night convinces lonely passers-by on the Brooklyn Bridge to commit suicide. He offers them as human sacrifices for his lover, who, years ago - because of him - committed suicide at the same location. In his frenzy he turns her into Eris, the Goddess of Revenge.
Due to time problems we were unable to pursue this project, but it was in that time that 'Jerusalem' came to life. Any questions...?"
Echolette

Dance With Me
"The museum of natural history at Central Park plays home to a huge, ancient asteroid. Actually a splendid setting to meet with your lover, I would think."
Marian

For a Million
"Every time I hear the instrumental part at the end, two specific pictures come to my mind which I once found in an old photo-album: a blond nazi-boy and two galloping giraffes."
Marian

A Victory of Love
"Perhaps all our songs are windows in an ivory tower that is surrounded by a changing world. Everywhere you turn there is another view but always from the same building."
Bernhard

The Jet Set
"We didn't intend to write a proper song: it was supposed to be some kind of jingle that advertises things money can't buy: anarchy, freedom, love, fun and a piece of the end of the world."
Marian

Red Rose
"This one is for John Lilly, Aleister Crowley and the fallen angels."
Echolette

Summer Rain
"You should let yourself be guided by what the song has to tell you."
Bernhard

Forever Young
"Probably you've only really grown up when you can bear not being understood."
Marian