The Best of Simon & Garfunkel supersedes Greatest Hits as the best compilation of the duo, with more tracks (20 compared to Greatest Hits' 14). Among the new additions are some notable hits: "Hazy Shade of Winter," "At the Zoo," "Fakin' It" (in its "Mono Single Version," for what that's worth), "The Dangling Conversation," and the 1975 reunion "My ...
Mona Bone Jakon only began Cat Stevens' comeback. Seven months later, he returned with Tea for the Tillerman, an album in the same chamber-group style, employing the same musicians and producer, but with a far more confident tone. Mona Bone Jakon had been full of references to death, but Tea for the Tillerman was not about dying; it was about ...
What seems to be an unlikely pairing in the duo of former -- and future apparently -- Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant and bluegrass superstar Alison Krauss is actually one of the most effortless-sounding pairings in modern popular music. The bridge seems to be producer T-Bone Burnett and the band assembled for this outing: drummer Jay Bellerose ...
Assembling a compilation of the Beatles is a difficult task, not only because they had an enormous number of hits, but also because singles didn't tell the full story; many of their album tracks were as important as the singles, if not more so. The double-album 1962-1966, commonly called The Red Album, does the job surprisingly well, hitting most ...
This album has had over three decades to make an impact, and it says something for its staying power that, in the face of more recent, more generously programmed, and better mastered compilations of the duo's work, it remains one of the most popular parts of the Simon & Garfunkel catalog -- which doesn't mean it isn't fraught with frustrations for ...
The Band was a very album-oriented group, and only had two Top 40 hit singles. So one could argue that a single-disc greatest hits compilation, or best-of anthology as this might more properly be called, is not the optimum way to dig into their repertoire. But if you're limiting yourself to one Band collection and your budget or patience does not ...
The tracks on this two-CD, 31-song anthology, spanning Cohen's career from his 1967 debut album through 2002's Ten New Songs, were chosen by Cohen himself. It could thus be regarded as an accurate mirror of how Cohen sees his own career path and catalog highlights. And there are many of the songs you would expect from any decent Cohen ...
Like many of his peers, Cat Stevens made records that were identified by strong, memorable hit singles, but make no mistake: he made albums that were cohesive works onto themselves. For that reason, the very idea of a Cat Stevens greatest-hits collection may be troublesome to some fans, since they will only notice the missing album tracks, but ...
A double-disc set released for the holiday season of 2000, The Essential Bob Dylan is a fine choice for the casual listener that just wants all the songs they know on one collection -- it's Dylan's equivalent of Beatles One. Outside of the remastering and the previously non-LP (and very good) "Things Have Changed," there's nothing here for ...
Jeff Buckley was many things, but humble wasn't one of them. Grace is an audacious debut album, filled with sweeping choruses, bombastic arrangements, searching lyrics, and above all, the richly textured voice of Buckley himself, which resembled a cross between Robert Plant, Van Morrison, and his father Tim. And that's a fair starting point for ...
Astral Weeks is generally considered one of the best albums in pop music history. For all that renown, Astral Weeks is anything but an archetypal rock & roll album: in fact, it isn't a rock & roll album at all. Employing a mixture of folk, blues, jazz, and classical music, Van Morrison spins out a series of extended ruminations on his Belfast ...
This is the single-CD successor to Creeque Alley, the double-disc career retrospective issued in the early '90s. All of the hits from "California Dreamin'" to "Dream a Little Dream of Me" are here, along with their more celebrated album tracks, and the notes by Joseph Laredo provide a decent overview of the group's formation and history. The ...
Nettwerk reissued Sarah McLachlan's breakthrough album, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, with an additional live disc in 1996. The live disc is solid, but it isn't particularly noteworthy, making this package interesting only to hardcore collectors and devoted fans. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
Rhino's 2002 collection The Complete Greatest Hits is certainly welcome for presenting what is essentially all of his most popular songs on one 20-track disc, but, the thing is, that's actually a trickier task with Gordon Lightfoot than you might think. On both volumes of Gord's Gold, he re-recorded early songs and mixed them with current hits -- ...
It may be hard to believe, but 2004's Greatest Hits is not only the first retrospective Neil Young has released since 1977's Decade, it's the first ever single-disc collection of his best-known songs. That's a span of 27 years separating the two collections, which is an awful long time to resist a Greatest Hits disc -- many of his peers succumbed, ...
Rhino/Atlantic's 2005 compilation Greatest Hits collects the hits and signature songs of Crosby, Stills & Nash -- not Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, which is a subtle difference, and one that would seem to make a greater difference than it actually does. Apart from their debut, CSN always was a bigger deal -- more popular, more critically ...
The yang to Astral Weeks' yin, the brilliant Moondance is every bit as much a classic as its predecessor; Van Morrison's first commercially successful solo effort, it retains the previous album's deeply spiritual thrust but transcends its bleak, cathartic intensity to instead explore themes of renewal and redemption. Light, soulful, and jazzy, ...
If Highway 61 Revisited played as a garage rock record, the double album Blonde on Blonde inverted that sound, blending blues, country, rock, and folk into a wild, careening, and dense sound. Replacing the fiery Michael Bloomfield with the intense, weaving guitar of Robbie Robertson, Bob Dylan led a group comprised of his touring band the Hawks ...
A&M's 32-track retrospective of eccentric singer/songwriter Cat Stevens manages to cram into two discs what 2001's On the Road to Find Out box set tried to accomplish over four. While not as informative or "rarities"-heavy, Gold tells the artist's story with utter succinctness, from earnest, post-counterculture semi-hedonist to Islamic recluse. ...
To compile a comprehensive one-disc best-of James Taylor album is a daunting task in and of itself. To compile it from material from three labels is a gutsy thing for David McLees and Warner Bros. to do and expect to make fans -- let alone pompous critics (no exception here) -- happy. Over 20 tracks, Warner has succeeded -- with full cooperation ...
While the Beatles still largely stuck to love songs on Rubber Soul, the lyrics represented a quantum leap in terms of thoughtfulness, maturity, and complex ambiguities. Musically, too, it was a substantial leap forward, with intricate folk-rock arrangements that reflected the increasing influence of Dylan and the Byrds. The group and George Martin ...
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