Greatest Hits, Volume 2

by

James Taylor

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This companion to James Taylor's 1976 Greatest Hits package, which chronicled his Seventies' output for Warner Brothers, is cause for celebration for casual James Taylor fans who have not kept up with his infrequent studio albums since signing with Columbia in 1977--there have only been seven, and they're all represented here.

The sixteen songs collected here are presented in chronological order from 1977's J.T. through 1997's Hourglass. The good news is that you get his late Seventies hits "Handy Man" (No. 4, 1977), "Your Smiling Face" (No. 20, 1977), "Up on the Roof" (No. 28, 1979) and his final Top 40 hit "Her Town Too" (No. 11, 1981), a duet with J.D. Souther from the album Dad Loves His Work. You also get most of the key album tracks including three from each of his Nineties albums, New Moon Shine and Hourglass.

The bad news? You get only three tracks from his Columbia debut J.T. Okay, maybe that's a personal bias, but it was arguably his best album for Columbia and second only to Sweet Baby James as the best album of his career. It would have been nice to have made room for "Honey Don't Leave L.A.," "Bartender's Blues" or "Traffic Jam." [Did 1985's That's Why I'm Here really need to be represented by four songs? It was not is strongest album, yet it is the most represented on this collection.] The problem was that Taylor's first greatest hits album covered only six years, and Volume 2 tries to cover twenty years with a single disc. When it comes to one of popular music's best singer-songwriters, that's a daunting task. Overall, it succeeds and this will make a welcome addition to your CD collection. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED