Greatest Hits
recaps
LeAnn Rimes
' time at
Curb Records
-- an era that began with enormous, surprising success and ended acrimoniously, with
Rimes
gunning for crossover success as the label churned out product. Released about a year after her
teen-pop
makeover
Twisted Angel
, the collection is a bit like
herself, perched between her
country
beginnings and
pop
crossover aspirations, wanting to be hip, but settling for the middle of the road more often than not. This comes through in the song selection, which has all the big hits that brought her steadily away from her classicist
beginnings with
"Blue"
and closer to the
adult contemporary
mainstream of
"Can't Fight the Moonlight."
While nothing major is missing -- and nothing should be missing, given its generous 19-track length -- there are no less than nine charting singles missing (including
"Hurt Me,"
"Looking Through Your Eyes,"
most singles from
), with album tracks and new cuts, including a superfluous cover of
"O Holy Night"
tacked onto the end (the better to position the album for
holiday
sales), taking their position. Since all the major songs are here, it's a worthwhile collection, but the sequencing is not only hopelessly nonchronological, it develops no momentum and bogs down in the middle, suggesting that this was not so much compiled as it was thrown-together, a suspicion confirmed by the chintzy bonus DVD on the limited-edition release -- nearly every other bonus DVD on holiday 2003 releases contained a full collection of videos, making this seem all the more shoddy. And that's the problem with this
-- it may give the hits, but its careless presentation mean that it's much less than what it should have been. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine