Well, it's all here. ALL of it. If you love all of "Alabama's" workhorse
material, that has earned them the staggering 41 #1 hits as proclaimed in the title of this collection, then this album will be close to Nirvana for you. (The heavenly place, not the band.) If you hate them, and buy into their not-wholly-undeserved rep as the K-mart of country/pop glop, then this album might be the fourth circle of hell. (But you latter people won't be reading this review or buying this disc anyway.)

Giving this album a smack-dab-in-the-middle rating of 3 1/2 stars shows
that this reviewer, like many folks, has his Alabama feelings also somewhere in the middle of our two possibilities. Not everything they've sung is garbage, but it sure isn't all gold either. Oxymoronically, what has made them in some ways such consistent hitmakers, has also made them, at times, annoying to the nth degree.

After three new songs open the album (get to those in a minute), the
listener is careened through a conveniently chronological tour of those said 41 chart-toppers. The first three songs show the promise that Alabama certainly capitalized on. "Tennesee River" is a 70-ish country-pop anthem, dashed with some healthy country fiddle, which turns it into a distinctive number. "Why Lady Why" has more country/pop harmonization pushing to an almost jazz feel, while "Old Flame" shows Alabama IS Country after all.

Track number 7, "Feels So Right," is where, depending on which part of the Alabama love-hate spectrum you reside on, either the downfall begins, or the legend starts. This cloying, seemingly never-ending piece of chaff was Alabama's first song to make huge waves in Top 40/Adult Contemporary radio and certainly paved the way for their across-the- board selling of mucho albums. But if you agree with this reviewer, that this song makes Dentist's Office Muzak sound like Metallica, this is where you get off the Alabama joy train, because for the next nearly two decades, "Feels So Right" is bascially re-done oodles of times throughout their chart dominations.

Compare "Feels So Right" to "Take Me Down," "When We Make Love," "There's No Way," "Face to Face," "If I Had You" and "Forever's As far As I'll Go," and the similarities are more overwhelmingly obvious than a Yankee at a rodeo. This music isn't blatantly offensive, but it can be likened to cheese from a spray can. No one will lie to your face and say that on the couch in your undies watching the ball game that the stuff isn't pretty damn yummy, but conversely no one could think eating a whole can of the stuff wouldn't make you at least CONSIDER vomiting.

On the country side of Alabama's country/pop dual identity, the same
sort of thing occurs. After the power of "Tennesee River," Alabama so
desperately wants the home folks to know that "HEY! WE ARE STILL COUNTRY TOO!" that "Tennesee River's" attractive earthiness gets dilluted into hit- you-over-the-head-commitments-to-countrydom through the years with forced numbers like "If Your'e Gonna Be In Texas," "Song of The South," "High Cotton," "Southern Star," "Down Home" and "Born Country." With Alabama's record sales almost on a level with bands like the Stones and Beatles, their tributes to "plain, hard-working folks," such as "Forty-Hour Week," "Roll On" and "Can't Keep a Good Man Down," while being somewhat attractive ditties, come off as almost gratingly insincere.

But there are consistenices in this still impressive body of work that take
the edge off much of the remanider's repetition. When Alabama just GIVES UP and says " OK . . . we are Pop," and hits gold with gems like "You've Got The Touch," and the Carpenters cover "Touch Me When We're Dancing," no one can touch them. Same goes for their output when the decide it's okay to be Country, but it doesn't have to have a flashing neon sign proclaiming so. Their recent "Sad Lookin' Moon" is a subtle charmer that finally lets the boys legitimate talent shine through the years of differing artifices.

Finally, there comes one more oxymoron when comparing the most recent songs on the concluding part of the disc with the the three new tracks that open it. About 8 or 9 singles ago someone in the band, or at
their record company, must have decided that the attitude of "If it ain't
broke don't fix it" could be construed as lazy. Along with "Sad Lookin'
Moon," some of Alabama's recent songs, such as "Hometown Honeymoon," "She Ain't your Ordinary Girl," "Reckless," "Then Again" and "Jukebox In My Mind" are unforced, fun, glop-less and downright awesome tunes. But their three new songs that begin this magnum opus, except for their current lovely single "How do you Fall In Love,"
with its beguling melody and nifty wordplay, are trips to retread town
again. "Keepin' Up" and "Five O' Clock 500" both, again, fall into the "We-have-30-jillion-dollars-but-we-feel-your-blue-collar-pain" ridiculousness.

The boys from Fort Wayne certainly deserve their fair shar of credit
though. While consistent hit making doesnt make you great in terms of a
"great" artist, with the radical shifts in country, top 40, and MOR music in
the past 10 years it certainly DOES show a kind of greatness to BE this
consistent. Roll On, Boys!