Ultimate x 002

An update of the 1994 compilation The Best of Sade, The Ultimate Collection contains all but two of the Sade singles – "When Am I Going to Make a Living" and, unfortunately, "Turn My Back on You" – released through the first six studio albums. There are six well-chosen album cuts, highlighted by the exceptionally spacious Love Deluxe ballads "Bullet Proof Soul" and "Pearls."…

A year – nearly to the day – after Epic released the single-disc Number Ones compilation in November 2003, the long-awaited Michael Jackson box set finally saw the light of day. Entitled The Ultimate Collection, the 57-track set spans five discs…

Take note that this 2011 double-disc collection is billed not as the best of Bob Seger, it's the best of Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band – a rule the compilers immediately bend in two directions by including the Bob Seger System's 1968 debut single "Ramblin' Gamblin’ Man" (in its mono mix, collectors note) and "Wait for Me" from Seger's 2006 comeback Face the Promise…

The Ultimate Collection spans the group's career in two discs, including the hits, B-sides, and key album tracks.
Although generally not as highly regarded by the critics as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, or the Who, the Kinks may well have influenced far more musicians. The three-chord sledgehammer proto-metal burst of teenage lust called "You Really Got Me," the Kinks' third single and first hit, touched off a garage band explosion, which in turn influenced the rise of punk a decade later. Blessed with an astute songwriter in Ray Davies, the Kinks followed the template of "You Really Got Me" for a couple years, racking up hits with "All Day and All of the Night," "Tired of Waiting for You," and "Till the End of the Day." But Davies had more than one card in his pocket, and he blossomed into a sharp social satirist ("Dedicated Follower of Fashion")…

Preceding the elaborate 2005 reissues of Eurythmics' eight proper albums by a month, The Ultimate Collection narrowly trumps 1991's Greatest Hits since it features remastered sound and a more extensive track list. While it does not contain "Don't Ask Me Again," opting to instead select a couple merely decent highlights from 1999's Peace, two new (unplanned) recordings add value for any kind of fan. Bookending the disc, "I've Got a Life" is powerful disco-pop with Annie Lennox strongly present over a bursting multi-tiered arrangement, while the relatively low-key "Was It Just Another Affair" has more in common with late-period Everything But the Girl.

Billed as the first Santana compilation to span his entire career, it is true that Ultimate Santana does indeed run the gamut from 1969's "Evil Ways" to 2002's "Game of Love," but if you think that means it handles all phases of his career equally, you'd be sadly mistaken. Essentially, this 18-track set plays like a collection of highlights from his Supernatural-era comebacks, spiked with a couple of classic rock oldies – because that's what it really is. It contains no less than ten superstar duets, including new numbers with Nickelback's Chad Kroeger (the streamlined and smoothed "Into the Night," which has little of Kroeger's trademark growly histrionics) and Jennifer Lopez and Baby Bash ("This Boy's Fire," a dance number where Santana seems incidental), plus a version of "The Game of Love" with Tina Turner (don't worry, the lighter, brighter, superior Michelle Branch version is here too) and plus "Interplanetary Party," which is a new band recording that sounds like a star duet.