One Of Country Music's True Treasures
Clint Black is a great country artist, no if's, and's, or but's about it. He has a pure, classic voice. His lyric writing and melodies are flawless and fresh. This Greatest Hits album is just as perfect as an all new, original album. You get two new songs on here called "Like The Rain", which is a great, strong Clint song. The other is called "Halfway Up", which is a pleasing little ditty. The rest is pure gold. "A Better Man" is as good a country song as country songs get. His rendition of the classic Eagles song "Desperado" is priceless. It shows off his impressive vocal abilities. His performance of it gives goosebumps that Don Henley hasn'y given me when he sings it. There is not one bad track on here. Each song is as good as any other one. A lot of the songs are bouncy up-tempo songs, and that's just fine. "A Good Run Of Bad Luck" is great. The best catchy song is "Summer's Comin'". It's a great summer type song along the lines of "Summertime Blues". An instant classic. If you like country music, you need this. If your not sure about country music and are willing to experiment, this CD is a great place to start. Clint Black can do no wrong.
Great CD.
Clint Black Is One Of Today's Hottest Country Music Stars Today. Unlike The Hits That Made Him A Superstar Like George Strait. I Remember His First #1 Hit "A Better Man" Hit Radio Airwaves In The Winter Of 1989. The First Album Had 5 #1 Singles But 3 Of Them Did Not Apper On The Greatest Hits Package. His Next Album "Put Yourself In My Shoes" Released In The Fall Of 1990 Was A Great Album. The Title Track, Loving Blind, And Ware Are You Now Where #1 Hits. His Third Album "The Hard Way" Released In 1992 Had Some Good Songs On It. We Tell Ourselves And Burn One Down Where Top Ten Hits When My Ship Comes In Was A #1 Hit. His Next Album No Time To Kill Released In The Summer Of 1993 Had The Number 1 Hits A Bad Goodbye A Romantic Duet With Wynonna Judd, The Title Track, State Of Mind, A Good Run Of Bad Luck Which Appeared On The 1994 Mel Gibson Jody Foster Film Maverick. His 5 Album "One Emoiton Released A Few Months After The Movie Was A Good Cd. It Included The Hits Where Ever You Go, The Title Track, Summer's Coming, And Life Gets Away. Like The Rain Was Another #1 Hit In The Fall Of 1996. Half Way Up Was A Top Ten Hit In Early 1997.
Great CD
Screw you David Cantwell, I thought the album was great.
Good -not great- overview of a talented artist's first phase
Clint Black arrived on the country charts in 1989, a great year for new talent in country music, with Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, and Travis Tritt also releasing debut albums. As hard as it may be to believe now, Black's debut Killin' Time established him initially as the biggest of the new stars with hits like "A Better Man," "Nobody's Home," and the title track.These songs effectively displayed Black's clever wordplay amid fairly traditional honky tonk arrangements and a Haggardesque vocal style with a dash of quiver. While it wasn't long before Black was surpassed in the sales and award arena by Brooks and even Jackson, his music continued to captivate - as this Greatest Hits shows.
All of his first five albums are represented on Greatest Hits, but strangely, only "A Better Man" and "Killin' Time" are here from the first album, with the lone entry from his second, Put Yourself In My Place, being its title track. Any collection calling itself Black's Greatest should have included the aforementioned "Nobody's Home" (now available on Greatest Hits II) and the sumptuous "Loving Blind."
By the time Black released his fourth and fifth albums (which have a combined seven tracks included here), his music had begun to lack some originality. The melodies for "We Tell Ourselves" and "No Time To Kill" are pretty much interchangeable and "Summer's Comin'" sounds like a knockoff of Jackson's megahit "Chattahoochee" (and even if it's not, Black's lyrics have never been so uninspired).
Still, there were always plenty of highpoints, like the uptempo "Life Gets Away" and "A Good Run Of Bad Luck," plus his spinetingling pairing with Wynonna, "A Bad Goodbye." About the only big hit missing from albums 3 through 5 is the logistically-challenged yet irresistible "When My Ship Comes In" from The Hard Way (also available on Greatest Hits II).
Greatest Hits added four new recordings intended to appeal to the Black fan who already has everything else. "Like The Rain" is a haunting departure for Black that is truly among his best work. Likewise, "Cadillac Jack Favor" offers a nice change of pace in the form of a story song: the true saga of rodeo champ Favor who was framed for murder but eventually found innocent.
Less memorable are Black's downbeat "Half Way Up" and a live version of Desperado" with clumsy phrasing that never threatens to rival the Eagles' original version. These last two tracks are the exception rather than the rule, however. Greatest Hits is a consistently entertaining (if not fully comprehensive) set of highlights from the first phase of one of country music's most gifted singer-songwriters.
Disappointing
It's disappointing an artist of this caliber is filling albums with cover tracks of Eagles songs.
Clint Black is often an amazing songwriter with one of the best pure voices in contemporary country music. However, since his impressive debut, Killin' Time, Black seems to have grown increasingly more attached to clever word play and abstract ideas than he is to emotion and narrative. And when the songs are as awful as "A Bad Goodbye" (an overwrought 1993 duet with Wynonna), who cares how good his voice is? The Greatest Hits collects, seemingly at random, 14 of his Top 10 hits released between 1989 and 1996, plus an album track and a live Eagles cover. However, it omits at least 10 singles from that period that were every bit as popular and, unfortunately, most of them were from his superior earlier years. Still, any album that includes "A Better Man" (a modern country masterpiece), "We Tell Ourselves" (an idea song that works), and "Put Yourself in My Shoes" (as good a male vocal performance as Nashville has heard in 15 years) can hardly be called bad. But it sure can be called disappointing. --David Cantwell
