The Essential Kinks, out Oct. 14, marks the first time the English rock band have released career-spanning album. Fittingly, they went all out for it, even tapping David Bowie for the liner notes.

"I've never heard a Kinks song that I didn't like," Bowie writes in the notes. "Of course, from their noisy and brash beginnings, the Kinks have come to stand for some of the most enduring and heart-clutching pop of all time. They are in the gut of every British song-writer who followed them and are indisputably a cornerstone of everything pop and rock. I love 'em. The world loves 'em."