The 1990 collection The Very Best of Elton John is an excellent 30-track summary of his peak years, running from "Your Song" to "You Gotta Love Someone." In a sense, it's the concise counterpart to the box set To Be Continued, released that same year but spanning four discs and filled with rarities. Although that set has several great songs that aren't here, this set has nothing extraneous – just the biggest hits from a time when John was hitting the U.S. and U.K. Top 40 every single year. There are no American collections that perform the same task, which is a shame because there isn't a better Elton John hits collection than this; if you're looking for all the biggest hits on one album, it's certainly worth the import prices.
The 1990 collection The Very Best of Elton John (available in the U.K. and Australia) is an excellent 30-track summary of his peak years, running from "Your Song" to "You Gotta Love Someone." In a sense, it's the concise counterpart to the box set To Be Continued, released that same year but spanning four discs and filled with rarities…
When first issued in 1980, Lady Samantha was initially only available in the U.K. as either an eight track or cassette. For enthusiasts of Elton John's early and often edgy pop/rock, the odds and sods compilation became known as a haven for the vast majority of John's pre-Caribou (1974) non-LP sides. Although many of these tunes were initially relegated to mere B-side status, they retain the consistently high caliber inherent in early John (piano/vocals) and Bernie Taupin (lyrics) collaborations…
With the success of the band Incantation and ethnic South American music in 1982-1983, Chris Rea introduced his sixth album, Wired to the Moon, with the track "Bombollini," which was over six minutes of jungle-sounding drums and the haunting sound of pan pipes. The ethnic flavor continued on the second track, "Touché d'Amour," which was reggae in the unashamed style of lovers rock. However, Rea wasn't going to disappoint his fans altogether, small in number though they were in the U.K., having built a career over several albums of soft rock tracks and midtempo ballads with Dire Straits-style guitar breaks, and the rest of the tracks on Wired to the Moon fell easily into this category, especially "Shine, Shine, Shine" and "Holding Out," which were lovely emotive ballads.
For the majority of American listeners, Lulu's career began and ended with "To Sir with Love," the theme song to the 1967 box office hit, though she enjoyed considerably greater success in the United Kingdom, and not without reason. Lulu had a solid, spirited voice that could handle an admirable range of material, and she tended to get good songs that she made the most of with the assistance of some very talented studio help (John Paul Jones arranged much of the material on her 1969 set Lulu's Album).