The Very Best of the Eagles [2003]

Disc 1
1	Take It Easy
2	Witchy Woman
3	Peaceful Easy Feeling
4	Desperado
5	Tequila Sunrise
6	Doolin-Dalton
7	Already Gone
8	The Best of My Love
9	James Dean
10	Ol' '55
11	Midnight Flyer
12	On the Border
13	Lyin' Eyes
14	One of These Nights
15	Take It to the Limit
16	After the Thrill Is Gone
17	Hotel California
Disc 2
1	Life in the Fast Lane
2	Wasted Time
3	Victim of Love
4	The Last Resort
5	New Kid in Town
6	Please Come Home for Christmas
7	Heartache Tonight
8	The Sad Café
9	I Can't Tell You Why
10	The Long Run
11	In the City
12	Those Shoes
13	Seven Bridges Road Live
14	Love Will Keep Us Alive
15	Get Over It
16	Hole in the World

Barnes & Noble

This double-disc collection paints a more focused portrait of one of the biggest-selling American rock acts of all time than the Eagles' exhaustive box set, Selected Works: 1972-1999, but one with finer detail than the band's two mega-platinum selling greatest hits packages. Very Best includes all 20 songs found on those two albums -- from the easygoing rock of "Take It Easy" through the live "Seven Bridges Road," recorded in 1980 and spotlighting the group's rich, four-part harmonies -- and much more. Deeper album tracks, such as the soaring Tom Waits cover "Ol' 55," the Don Henley-sung, Philly soul-influenced "Wasted Time," and the Joe Walsh rocker "In the City," offer a richer appreciation of a band always game to stretch their stylistic reach. The set is fleshed out by the Eagles' more-soul-than-blues version of Charles Brown's holiday ballad "Please Come Home for Christmas," originally released in '78, and two studio cuts from the 1994 reunion album, Hell Freezes Over -- and brings fans up to date with Henley and Glenn Frey's 9/11 think piece "Hole in the World," a fittingly subdued ballad with intertwining vocals. The booklet includes detailed track notes and extensive, track-by-track commentary from Henley and Frey. (Initial copies of the set also include a bonus DVD featuring the video for "Hole in the World," a "Making the Video" segment, and rare behind-the-scenes footage.) Lydia Vanderloo

All Music Guide

The problem with assembling an Eagles collection in 2003 is that there already is a perfect Eagles collection: 1976's Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975). Although it spanned a mere ten songs and summarized only the first five years and four albums of their career, it pulled off a nifty trick by making the albums it summarized -- and by extension, the band -- seem better than they actually were. By concentrating on big hits and substituting album track "Desperado" for "Outlaw Man," a single that didn't receive much chart action, the collection captured the band's peak, making a convincing case for the band's strengths while providing a compulsively enjoyable listen. Of course, the Eagles continued to have hits after the 1976 release of Their Greatest Hits, scoring the biggest proper album of their career that very year with Hotel California. After that, egos and infighting hampered the band, leading to just one more album in 1979's The Long Run before a disbandment in 1982, which was followed 12 years later by a reunion, charmingly dubbed Hell Freezes Over, since most pundits predicted that's when the band would reunite. This isn't much new ground to cover for a compilation, as the spotty 1982 The Eagles Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 illustrated, but even with a box set like 2000's Selected Works, there was room for a collection that contained all their big hits on one or two discs: hence the birth of Warner Strategic Marketing's 2003 double-disc Eagles collection, The Very Best Of.

There's little question that The Very Best Of does its job well, containing nearly all of the group's charting singles -- including the non-LP seasonal tune "Please Come Home for Christmas" and omitting the purposely ignored "Outlaw Man" along with a couple of reunion-era singles that didn't make much impact -- and filling out the margins with album rock staples such as "Doolin-Dalton," "Ol' 55," "Victim of Love," "In the City," and "Those Shoes." It's a good collection, eliminating the need to own actual Eagles albums by containing all the key songs from each effort, including the highlights from Hell Freezes Over. If there are quibbles, the biggest is that the first disc isn't nearly as compulsively listenable as Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975), which covers the same ground, with the second being that after Hotel California the collection runs out of steam a little bit, as the Eagles sound more like a collective of solo performers instead of a band -- but that's the run of their career, too. In any case, The Very Best Of is an excellent way to get all the Eagles' songs that matter on one collection. [The Very Best Of was also released as a limited-edition three-disc set with the third disc being a bonus DVD containing the video for the new song "Hole in the World," as well as a making of the video featurette and "Backstage Pass to Farewell 1."] Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Rolling Stone

It's a dream package that unerringly documents Henley and Frey's Eagle-eyed view of the 1970s. Parke Puterbaugh

Blender

This double CD casts back to a time when Don Henley had a 'fro and the Eagles were defining the Southern California sound. RJ Smith