Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Greatest hits compilations are always a mixed bag.  Devotees usually don’t get much out of them.  They have already compiled the tracks on the original albums, and normally there’s no need to shell out more dough and revisit their childhood.  The other category of listener, the wandering passerby who has never gotten into the band before, will listen and enjoy, but always leave the CD wanting more.  Thus, a truly genuine greatest hits collection – in the words of Nick Hornby of “High Fidelity” fame – would be a cacophony of songs that never lived before side-by-side, but, now, after putting them together, they attain a greater meaning.  If a collection doesn’t achieve this redefinition of sorts, then it just sounds like a dumping ground and a hack reason to get the band together to make some money and add a few tour dates.

Chicago’s The Best of Chicago:  40th Anniversary Edition is somewhere in the middle.  The album, on two CDs, is fairly comprehensive, including 30 tracks from, well, 40 years.  But, after listening to the songs chosen for the CD, it’s just not comprehensive enough.  The far superior "The Very Best of Chicago:  Only the Beginning” had 39 tracks, many of them rarities.  This new compilation has the standards, 25 or 6 to 4, Saturday in the Park, and Call on Me.  But, it sort of ends there.  There are no alternate tracks, no double takes, and no original songs.  It should be a golden rule in the music business that if you’re going to bother compiling songs for a collection, you might as well cut a new track to entice the old birds.  Point in case:  the Rolling Stones’ “40 Licks,” which still stands as a marvel in the greatest hits category.

But, alas, I’m being too mean.  Why?  Because there is no stopping Chicago’s toe-tapping, summer-loving, slightly-cliched-but-still-damn-good vibe.  When the bass goes crazy at the beginning 25 or 6 to 4, there is no stopping your head from bobbing.  So, for pure nostalgia, this 30-track album achieves its purpose.  I would have liked the songs not to ascend in chronological order, but I can’t complain too much, because the absolutely sublime Another Rainy Day in New York City next to If You Leave Me Now seems to work beautifully.  One caveat of going chronological is that many won’t finish disc two, because it includes some of the band’s lesser known work from recent years (especially the new ones from 2006).

Also, the album really needs a list of lyrics.  There are interesting asides in the liner notes about each song, but no way to reference the words they’re talking about.  Also the asides are interesting, but feel lost on the page.  They need an accompanying DVD with taped interviews, otherwise who is going to read what ultimately proves to be a transcript?