Amy Grant - Greatest Hits (W/Dvd) (Spec)

She's a pioneer of Christian music! Now Amy's newest release celebrates nearly 20 years of her Christian and mainstream pop hits that explore our faith in God and our relationships with one another. Features hits like "Baby Baby," "House of Love," "Takes A Little Time," "Good For Me," "Lead Me On," plus two new songs! Album Description

Amy Grant - She never stops getting better

Amy never stops getting better with each release and re-digitization. This is a must have compilation of her most wonderful and greatest hits. September 26, 2008

Good songs, but she doesn't speak to those with a troubled heart

I've decided to break a rule that I usually try to follow very religiously when writing reviews for Amazon and IMDB. By breaking this rule, I may be writing an unfair review, but I feel compelled to write it nonetheless. The rule is -- never criticize the artist for his/her choice of subject matter. Always grant (no pun intended) the artist his/her "given" and criticize the artist on how well or badly he/she handles it.

Actually, I'll start by obeying the rule and say that Amy Grant handles her "given" very well. The songs on this collection are catchy and uplifting. In fact, I had this CD in my CD alarm clock for awhile because it was nice to wake up to.

Now here's where I break the rule. I am unhappy with Amy for having no songs that speak to someone with a troubled heart -- and boy have I got a troubled heart right now. My wife died on October 7, 2007 by drinking herself to death, and she made my life a living hell for several years before that, as well as endangering the life of our 6-year-old daughter by driving drunk with her in the car. And while we're on the subject of my daughter, I don't even get to raise her. Since I can't drive, due to low vision, I'm not sure I can take care of her and so I've had to give her to my in-laws to raise.

The song on this collection that comes closest to speaking to my situation is "Takes a Little Time," but even that song makes light of a major disaster -- the sinking of the Titanic.

Again, I realize you can argue that Amy is a pop artist and so isn't in the business of writing "deep" songs a la Bob Dylan or Tori Amos. But I have a counter - argument. She began her career writing faith-based -- i.e. Christian -- songs, and I feel like if she's going to choose to deal with spiritual matters, she should deal with the subject of being spiritually troubled. My wife was a Christian and so am I.

Now, if my beef with Amy's music isn't fair, I have another beef that I think is fair, concerning the DVD included with this deluxe edition. If you buy this edition, you're supposed to get a free three-month membership in the "Friends of Amy" fan club. I wanted to take Amy up on this, because I thought I could discuss my feelings with others on the message boards that are part of Amy's fan club, and possibly get a message to Amy herself.* Well, I went to the sign-up page, and it seems you have to create a unique user name to sign up. It also seems that EVERY user name I entered caused my application to be rejected with the message, "User name in use." Well, if the invitation to join Amy's fan club for three months for free was really sincere, I think they should have helped me out by either showing me a list of user names in use or generating one at random for me.

Amy, I'd like to join your fan club of you'd let me in. And would you like to say anything to someone who's been through what I've been through?

*If anybody knows how I could get a message to Amy herself, I would appreciate you letting me know how. I promise to be nice. March 28, 2008

Interview video alone is worth the price

The greatest benefit (for new Amy fans and old) of this Special Edition - in my humble opinion - is the nearly half hour of interview footage she provides. Just sitting on the couch with a mug of coffee, reminiscing and vividly describing the hows and whys of the peaks and valleys of her recording career and her life, Amy demonstrates exactly why she has touched audiences and made devoted fans for three decades. It's nearly impossible not to like such an earthy, gentle person who is openly alloyed with the wonderment and messiness of real life. She's like an ideal next door neighbor that you'd love to sit around and discuss life, family, and faith with. And in some ways we already have because it's all there in her songs.

I am an Amy completist, so I already own every song and music video on this special edition set. It's difficult for me to judge the strength of the track selection because even though I love them all, there are dozens of favorite songs that aren't on it. That's just going to happen when trying to boil 30 years and 20-odd albums down into 19 songs.

I will say to the new or casual fan who is looking for a greatest hits CD to start their AG collection that this is a pretty good place to start. Her first compilation, The Collection was a good, relatively deep summation of Amy's purely Contemporary Christian period and is a great choice for those who want to focus solely on that era. Greatest Hits 1986-2004 covers her crossover and pop hit periods fairly well.

This CD is a very broad sampling of both eras - with better remastered sound quality for current systems. The mix of cheery 70s-style acoustics and string sections with 80s synthesizers and 90s adult pop can be a bit jarring but it's all part of Amy's growth over the decades. My only real gripe is the underrepresentation of her introspective and gut-wrenchingly honest work from Lead Me On and Behind the Eyes, which may be regarded by posterity as her two best albums. November 28, 2007

Fantastic CD

Amy Grant is a fantastic singer. Her soul come through with great style.
You should not miss your chance to hear her sing. November 3, 2007

Been there, heard that.

Its not that this isn't an excellent collection of songs, its that better collections have been previously released. The DVD is missing a lot of videos as well. October 30, 2007

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