Seals & Crofts - Greatest Hits

Seals & Crofts | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 25, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Warner Bros / Wea
• ASIN: B000002KHQ
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (86 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,542 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #4 in Music > Music Deals > $7.99 and Under
  • #64 in Music > Pop > Oldies > General
  • #85 in Music > Pop > Soft Rock

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Although the prime exponents of the '70s California soft rock style were album artists such as America, Bread, and Poco, Seals and Crofts--essentially an AM singles band--have aged even better. The key is in their tight songwriting. "Summer Breeze," "Diamond Girl," and the rest of the hits display an odd, but apt, sense of arrangement and instrumentation--and enough of a rock & roll sensibility to keep their sound from slumping into period piece laid-backism. Case in point: The duo's first band was the Champs, noted for the fake-Latin crudhopper "Tequila." Even so, it's not grit, but ace songcraft that captures the prize here. All of the ace songs are included. --Gavin McNett

Product Description

No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: CD
Artist: SEALS & CROFTS
Title: GREATEST HITS
Street Release Date: 07/06/1987
Domestic
Genre: ROCK/POP

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Trapped on the wrong side of the road, May 13, 2005

By 

haregrog "haregrog" (Wilmington, NC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Seals & Crofts - Greatest Hits (Audio CD)

Bands and their reputations live and die in the marketing. The Moody Blues could have been sold as soft rock lightweights with a few uptempo numbers, but they did it the right way: they presented themselves as a rock band that knew how to mellow out and explore different kinds of beautiful music.

Seals & Crofts were trapped on the opposite side of the road: these guys knew how to rock out, and were expert musicians with tremendous depth of songwriting and the kind of expansive vision usually associated with art-rock bands like Yes and ELP. But they could never escape their marketing as "easy listening." That's a shame, because they deserve a higher place than history has afforded them in the rock music echelon. The depth of their music, the quality of their voices, the superiority of their sound, and the breadth of their musical range left us some great music, and their Greatest Hits is even greater than the sum of its parts.

Forget the catchiness of even the two or three most cloying songs included here. "Summer Breeze" is right at the top with all great songs of the last 50 years or more; "Diamond Girl" is as good as popular music gets; and "We May Never Pass This Way (Again)" boasts a chorus as deep as anything that was ever played on 70s radio--without using any words other than the title.

"Hummingbird" and "East of Ginger Trees," among others, are unapologetically committed to a spiritual search, but without the dippy aimlessness of so much of that era's music. These down-to-earth Texans are passionately committed, well-read Baha'is who emphasized such novel ideas as peace, love and understanding.

The real genius of this collection is in the sequencing. While some of the original S&C albums contained a couple of "wholesome" or almost jokey songs (i.e. not the kind you want to hear on a rock record), and any dangerous power inherent in the music tended to be sequenced out, this collection smartly closes with the thought-provoking "We May Never Pass This Way," having taken us through the perfect balance (in the perfect order) of big hits, spiritual journeys, and intriguing side trips.

A proper re-issue would add the huge hit "Get Closer," the Philip Steir remix of "Summer Breeze," and perhaps one or two other pieces, but for a repeatable listen of ten songs that mostly represent this duo at their best, this is an excellent collection that still holds up.

38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific Compilation Of A Largely Under-Appreciated Duo!, August 25, 2000

By 

Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Seals & Crofts - Greatest Hits (Audio CD)

This is likely the most under-appreciated of the groups populating the popular music scene in the late sixties and early seventies. Like another fringe duo, Brewer and Shipley, whose evocative lyrics and memorable arrangements (which are largely unavailable today, especially their terrific "Shake Off The Demon" album) propelled them into the spotlight with its like "One Toke Over The Line" and "Tarkio Road", Brewer and Shipley were never taken as seriously as the content of their music deserved. Much of what they write and sing is organized around their religious beliefs, and this is easy to discover in most of what they say in the songs populating this greatest hits album. Their problem seemed to be that they encased a lot of meaningful lyrics into a very sweet and light sound that critics mistook for lightweight material, and they consequently scoffed at them. Yet their fame and popularity endures, and is deserved for a group who dominated the charts with "Diamond Girl", "Hummingbird", "I'll Play For You", and "We May Never Pass This Way Again", all chart-toppers and mainly from a single album, "Summer Breeze". Of course, "Summer Breeze" itself was a number one hit, and is till a perennial favorite for FM play. Do yourself a favor and read the lyrics as you listen along, though, and you will discover what sweet, loving, and compassionate human beings these two erstwhile escapees from the deep poverty of the rural South really are. If you listen you just can't miss it. My personal favorites here are "Ruby Jean and Billie Lee" (their wives' names), and of course, "I'll Play For You". Let them play for you too, real soon. Add this wonderful compilation to your collection, and then enjoy it!

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This Should Have Been So Much Better, August 24, 2001

By 

Eric R. Last "misterrockobscurities" (San Bruno, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Seals & Crofts - Greatest Hits (Audio CD)

Seals and Crofts are one of the most underappreciated and unfairly maligned bands in rock history. Their wonderful harmonies sounded like a cross between Simon & Garfunkel and the Bodeans, and their musicianship was often outstanding, especially in earlier albums. The arrangements frequently were flavored with hints of bluegrass as well as international (especially middle-eastern) sounds, the playing could be hot, and sometimes, they even rocked with surprising authority! Nowadays they are generally dismissed by the critics as lightweight, "lite-rock" pabulum, and frankly a good deal of their material (mostly the later stuff) warrents this reputation, but if you separate the wheat from the chaff you will find a sizable body of great music. Unfortunately, you won't find much of it on the slight "Greatest Hits". Yes, in 1975 when this collection first appeared on vinyl, it was a reasonable sampling of their biggest hits to date, but by the time it was reissued on CD, the record label really did Seals & Crofts and their fans a major disservice by not taking advantage of the extra capacity of the CD format to flesh out the collection with later hits ("Get Closer", "My Fair Share") and key album tracks (Such as the instramental "Wisdom" from the "Diamond Girl" LP, or more selections from the wonderful side 1 of their best album, "Year of Sunday"). Nonetheless, for the time being most of the Seals and Crofts catelog is unavailable on CD, so this collection is the best that's out there. But it could have been, and should have been, so much better.