The original and best boxset, I would say, was musically far out in the leftfield of pop. John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1969 Wedding Album was dreamt up as a boxset first, and an LP second, with Abbey Road and Let It Be designer John Kosh marrying the duo’s abstract soundscapes to photos, drawings, and reproductions of their wedding cake and marriage certificate.
Since then, the world is the boxset’s oyster because – quite simply – it’s amazing what you can fit inside a box that won’t fit in a sleeve. My two most recent favourites are the mid-80s FM Radio AOR (or Adult-Oriented Pop?) of The Alan Parsons Project’s Ammonia Avenue reissue. And the deep-end, obsessives-only 40th anniversary trawl through the OMD archives, Souvenir, which was sold by the label as “an embarrassment of riches” and easily lived up to the claim.