AMG Review of Her Greatest Hits: Songs of Long Ago

Bruce Eder
All Music Guide

This album was always sort of a joke among Carole King's serious fans, containing 12 songs drawn from six albums, and liner notes that fail even to acknowledge the existence of Writer, her one pre-Tapestry solo LP. A Natural Woman supplanted it later, and the addition of two live cuts, "Eventually" and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" from the ~Carnegie Hall concert on the 1999 reissue (Ode/Epic/Legacy 65846), doesn't extended the range or depth of the selection sufficiently. On the other hand, the 1999 remastering does improve the listening pleasure inherent in what is here -- the material off of Tapestry, Music, Rhymes & Reasons, and others is now very robust, with vivid instrumentation and a close, rich profile of King's voice. The selection of King's work is still only an inch deep, but it's a more rewarding inch.