AMG Review of Love Songs

James Christopher Monger
All Music Guide

RCA Legacy collects some of the late John Denver's more amorous recordings on Love Songs, a 15-track overview that spans the entirety of his career. The soft rock/country-folk troubadour excelled at sentimentality, crafting works both heartbreakingly gorgeous ("Annie's Song," "Leaving on a Jet Plane") and unbearably cheesy ("Perhaps Love," "Seasons of the Heart") with equal amounts of charm and smarm. As a collection of romantic ballads, Love Songs lives up to its moniker, but as a John Denver anthology, it suffers from the exclusion of more well-known material.