AMG Review of Love Songs [Box Set]

Steve Leggett
All Music Guide

Gregory Isaacs' enduring popularity in Jamaica is due in no small part to the common man persona he projects, and the best of his songs (he is an underrated and extremely prolific songwriter), which generally chronicle the despair of a decent man devastated by the twists and turns of being in love, have at their heart a kind of wounded amazement at his state of affairs. Isaacs has dealt with political and cultural themes, as well, but his legacy will always be as the man who set up the template for lovers rock. This expansive three-disc set (it also contains a DVD of a live Isaacs club date) sets forth the evidence in the form of some 60 love songs, and what is amazing here is not that there are 60 songs (which is by no means anywhere close to every love song Isaacs has recorded), but that he manages to voice the same theme and story line time and time again and yet still make it seem fresh, real, and singular. Included here are key tracks like "Love Is Overdue," "My Only Lover," "Lonely Soldier," "Night Nurse," "My Number One," and the left-field "Just Because I'm Shy" which, taken together, seem to document every possible way that love can be suffered through. But Isaacs understands a fundamental point about falling in love. He understands that for all the pain being in love can bring, in the end it is about the hope that time it's the one, this time it works, and he puts all of that into his singing, and that's why the man is still a star.