Customer Reviews

Entertainment Weekly: Greatest Hits 1967

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"Entertainment Weekly: The Greatest Hits 1967" is certainly right up front with how wide the musical spectrum was that year when you start off with Jefferson Airplane doing "Somebody to Love" and then follow up with the Monkees singing "Daydream Believer." I suppose you could come up with two musical groups with a wider gulf between them, but you are not going to increase the gulf by much. But beyond that what makes this a stellar hits collection is that of the dozen tracks "EW" has assembled, over half are #1 hits from 1967: "Kind of a Drag" by the Buckinghams, "Love is Here and Now You're Gone" by the Supremes, "Happy Together" by the Turtles, "Groovin'" by the Young Rascals, "The Letter" by the Box Tops, "To Sir With Love" by Lulu, "Incense and Peppermint" by the Strawberry Alarm Clock, and "Daydream Believer." That is two-thirds of the album, which may well be a record for this type of hits collection featuring various artists. Yes, if you have the greatest hits of Elvis, the Beatles, or the Supremes you could come up with more than eight #1's, but this one is not even in the neighborhood of shabby.

Only when you get to the last track, "Nashville Cats" by the Lovin' Spoonful do you have a misfire (I do not think I had ever heard the song before and having heard it there are better songs by that group from that year to put here). Even "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You," Frankie Valli's reminder that there was music in the Sixties before the British Invasion is pretty good and the 5th Dimension were heading into their glory years with "Up, Up and Away." As always the question becomes whether you can tally up five or more of these hits as missing from music library and if you graduated from high school in 1967 chances are you already have most of these. But even if you do, you have to be impressed by what "EW" put together for this review of the year in music.

There is only one song on this CD that I didn't especially care for (Nashville Cats). Otherwise whoever made the choices for the songs on this CD hit a home run. Great songs that are very singable. The 1960's may have been a tumultous decade, but there was nothing wrong with the music and this CD is a smash hit. If you are not familiar with the music of the 1960's and you would like one CD for a preview I don't think you could pick a better CD than this one. I liked it enough to buy eight extra copies for those in my after school music class because these songs have been tested on 11 to 13 year olds. These songs pass with flying colors.