The Bottom Line
Pros
- Offers a solid summary of the band's most successful and artistically significant phase.
- With only one exception, the disc aggressively draws from the band's strongest two dozen songs.
- All songs taken together, it represents some of the best of '80s mainstream arena rock.
Cons
- Omits three key album tracks from the band's two strongest studio releases that are sorely missed.
- Includes one definite throwaway track and one film soundtrack tune that is not essential.
- Suffers from odd, nonsensical sequencing that prevents a full appreciation of the band's evolution.
Description
- Despite its flaws, this greatest hits collection is truer to its title than most compilations.
- If music fans only plan to own one Journey CD, this is the one that must be in their collection.
- This album qualifies as an essential document of a key strand of '80s rock music.
Guide Review - Journey 'Greatest Hits' CD Review
Without a doubt standouts of the band's peak '80s phase include two of the best mid-tempo rockers ("Don't Stop Believin'" and "Separate Ways") and two of the best power ballads ("Open Arms" and "Faithfully") in rock history. However, the group's powers reach deeper than that, delivering some great album tracks and some very underrated songwriting in the three tracks pulled from the band's last proper album Raised on Radio.
Still, the band's longest-running, most serious fans can only lament the three songs that tragically missed the cut, the great rocker "Stone in Love" and the haunting "Still They Ride" from Escape and especially the ruthlessly ignored gem "After the Fall" from Frontiers. Even so, the discerning listener is lucky enough now to live in the age of digital music so that a purchase of this album can easily be rounded out by a few quick (and legal) downloads.
