Alan Jackson - The Greatest Hits Collection

By 1995 Alan Jackson had spent five years quietly becoming the most reliable hitmaker in country music, and this collection is the receipt. Drawn from his first four albums plus two new recordings, it has since been certified multiple times platinum and remains one of the best-selling country compilations ever released.

The run of songs here is close to absurd. "Chattahoochee" is presented in its extended mix, all fiddle and shuffle and small-town summer. "Don't Rock The Jukebox" and "Chasin' That Neon Rainbow" are the neotraditionalist statements of purpose, made when Nashville was drifting toward arena rock and Jackson simply refused to follow. "Midnight In Montgomery" is a ghost story about visiting Hank Williams' grave and remains the eeriest thing he ever cut. "Gone Country" is the joke he told at his own industry's expense, and it went to number one anyway. The two new tracks, "Tall, Tall Trees" and "I'll Try," both topped the country chart on release.

Twenty songs, almost all of them number ones, from a writer who never needed a gimmick to hold a room. This is the argument for Jackson as the definitive country voice of the nineties.