The last "Fatbox"* in the "Now That's What I Call Music!" CD series, before the introduction of the slimline, Single CD sized, 2 CD, swing-out tray "Brilliant-Box".^
*Fatboxis not an official name.
^Brilliant-Boxis an official name stamped onto the underside of the grey CD tray in these later cases
Also another thing was the CD's themselves became second place. The stranded of how CD's for this series was pressed got Worse. You only have to have a speck of Dust, Fingerprint or a straight In the Bin Scratch, These would skip all over the place, Not even those special cleaners can be used. They just made It worse. H.
...firstly, and most significantly, it's probably the worst selection of tunes I've come across on a "Now" album (In my opinion, and according to my own taste) - usually there's a handful of tunes I want, and even a couple of forgotten tracks, which are nice surprises... but this is almost entirely awful.
If you compare this with the next in the series: Now 29, you can see a step change taking place in popular music in this year... only the inclusion of a (horrendous) Blur track is suggestive of the indie / Britpoperry to come.
(Odd that there are not even any grunge tracks in this one, perhaps indicative of the lousy state of affairs at the time in the charts, which were ripe for a new infusion of... something)
And also, this is the last Fatbox in the CD series, which began with Now 10 (4, 8, and 9 being single CD highlights of the double vinyl versions).
So perhaps, all round, this is the signpost CD marking the end of an era, and the beginning of a new phase.