Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
93 of 94 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pat Finally Gets A Superb Remastering!, June 7, 2005
It's about time! Previous Benatar remasters have been fair to poor, sounding like they were pulled from any random source rather than the original master tapes. The 1999 'Synchronistic Wanderings' anthology, although an excellent collection of hits and rarities, was simply lacking with the remastering. "Love Is A Battlefield", for example, sounded rather flat for a so-called remaster. The same could be said for "We Belong" and most of the other tracks. Then there was the 2002 'Classic Masters' release. Finally I thought Capitol got it right since I had bought other 'Classic Masters' releases from other acts and was greatly impressed. Again, Capitol failed to impress with it's rather flat mastering treatment.
'Greatest Hits' has been digitally remastered by Evren Goknar @ Capitol Mastering, Hollywood. Oddly enough, Evren also remastered 1999's 'Synchronstic Wanderings' anthology. However, Evren has done a much better job on this 2005 release! The differences on some tracks are striking. The audio is rich, full, clear, and sharp -- a depth unheard of in any previous releases.
FINALLY, Capitol got it right with this release! While many Benatar fans may be reluctant to pick up yet another "hits" release from the rocker the audio quality alone should hopefully be enough to entice a few of the audiophiles.
I popped this disc into my player hoping I wouldn't be let down. From hearing the beginning heavy drum beats of "Heartbreaker" I knew I was in for a real treat! The remastering here is superb! Finally we get "Love Is A Battlefield" and "We Belong" with depth and range! "Shadows Of The Night" has never sounded so heavy! It's nice to have here in it's better single version. "Invincible" actually has a punchy intro. It has always sounded compressed and flat previously. Ah, "Le Bel Age" is breathtaking with it's bass line and drums! Who knew this little '86 hit had so much kick?! All tracks sound nearly flawless!
My only complaint is that while this collection covers most of Pat's biggest hits it's missing selections from the 1990s, notably gems such as "True Love" and "Somebody's Baby." Perhaps it would have been better titled as 'Greatest Hits 1979 - 1989' with another hits collection to follow a few months later, capturing those remaining hits and other strong album cuts.
The liner notes include comments from other female artists, such as Lisa Marie Presley, Tori Amos, and Martina McBride.
Additionally, Capitol have decided to use single versions of select tracks, perhaps for time, since the release is 20 tracks and clocking in 10 seconds short of 80 minutes. While some people may cringe at edited versions, most of them work here. However, I must say I've never been that fond of the single version of "Love Is A Battlefield" since it sounds chopped with the fade-out. Perhaps the full-length version will surface on a future remastered release. The tracklisting:
01 Heartbreaker (Single Mix)
02 We Live For Love (Single Edit)
03 Hit Me With Your Best Shot
04 Hell Is For Children
05 Treat Me Right
06 You Better Run
07 Fire And Ice
08 Promises In The Dark
09 Precious Time
10 Shadows Of The Night (Single Edit)
11 Little Too Late (Single Edit)
12 Looking For A Stranger
13 Love Is A Battlefield (Single Edit)
14 We Belong
15 Ooh Ooh Song (Single Edit)
16 Invincible (Theme From 'The Legend Of Billie Jean')
17 Sex As A Weapon
18 Le Bel Age (Single Edit)
19 All Fired Up (Single Edit)
20 One Love (Song Of The Lion) (Single Edit)
Now Capitol, how about giving Pat's entire catalogue a remastering treatment? 5.1 would be nice!
|
|
|
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Presenting that Invincible rock woman-Pat Benatar!, July 5, 2005
Finally-a one disc Greatest Hits by Pat Benatar that not only has all her Top 40 hits, but the one I was looking for-"Le Bel Age," which while not Top 40-it peaked at #54-was the song on MTV that finally got my interest. Lighter than most of her earlier hits, it was nevertheless peppered with the guitar-driven music that made her one of the 80's most formidable women. Or should I say Invincible?
Her debut single "Heartbreaker" with its racing guitar line, makes that song almost like a punk "Paranoid." This song features her distinctive vocal styles, nice and rough, and a higher pitched disco voice. #23 for this song? No way! Higher? Way! That was followed by "We Live For Love," which like some of her other songs, sounded like what Blondie would've been like if they'd been hard rock, or Berlin when they had their hard edge in Count Three And Pray. Such ferocity, including some awesome guitar work by Neil Girardo, her producer/guitarist whom she ended up marrying, is also present in "Promises In The Dark," which only peaked at #38.
Then came her first Top Ten hit, and the one she's usually associated with. No, not an anthem for death row inmates on firing squad, but "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" had the right sound, distinctive crunchy hard guitar chords, pop hooks, Pat's gritty voice, and a catchy chorus that took it to #9 and gold sales.
Before Suzanne Vega's "Luka," Benatar did her own sobering story of child abuse in "Hell Is For Children." She is stronger and blunter: "you shouldn't have to pay with your bones and your flesh," "Be daddy's girl and don't tell me Mommy a thing." compared to Vega's lyricism. "You Better Run," a cover of the Rascals song, has fiercer guitar crunching than "Best Shot" in this angry song against a partner who's no good. This barely missed the Top 40, by two positions.
The #18 "Treat Me Right" has a rhythm section reminiscent of Blondie's "Call Me," which had come out a year earlier. This might explain the existence of the Blondie/Pat Benatar Back To Back compilation. "Shadows of the Night", with its initial acapella chorus, and the explosion of guitars and synths, goes into the power synth/rock ballad genre before Bon Jovi, Cher, and others ran with it in the mid to late 80's.
Holly Knight co-wrote one of Benatar's highest charting hits, the #5 "Love Is A Battlefield," which she would later do on her solo album. With its quick tempo on drums and particularly keyboards, it's no wonder it also peaked at #1 on the rock charts for four weeks. The other was the soaring "We Belong," which combined rock ballad dynamics with keyboard fills.
Rockabilly meets synth pop in the infectiously danceable "Ooh Ooh Song," which inexplicably only got the #35. By the time I got around to Pat Benatar, her career was already entering its final stages. Thanks to my friend George, who loaned me his copy of Seven The Hard Way, I got into her. I'd already heard the anthemic "Invincible," the theme to the Helen Slater movie The Legend of Billie Jean. The other single, "Sex as a Weapon," was a slap against the use of men and women models using their bods to sell stuff, hence the chorus goes "stop using sex as a weapon/Love is more than a one way reflection."
However, listening now to "All Fired Up" from Wide Awake In Dreamland, I found that she had lost none of her fire-only her audience, as that song reached #19. The pounding drums and insistent guitar attack, leading to a refrain of self-affirmation, first softly, then culminating in her usual style: "I believe there comes a time, when everything just falls in line/we live and learn from our mistakes/our deepest cuts are healed by fate."
For those frustrated by some songs missing from other compilations, e.g. Best Shots, or others such as All Fired Up or Synchronistic Wanderings that have too much material, Greatest Hits is to me the best shot of compilations.
|
|
|
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
20 Timeless Classics..., June 11, 2005
To say Pat Benatar's first state-side greatest hits CD was a disappointment would be an overwhelming understatement.
Best Shots was issued on Halloween of 1989, ushered in by a week-long prime time co-hosting stint on MTV, and the release of "One Love" as a single (borrowed from her previous studio offering, 1988s Wide Awake In Dreamland), but anyone scanning the tracklisting was left scratching their head as to why half of her hits were missing.
In what seemed like an effort to showcase the more "schlock-rock"-ish selections from her back catalag (a genre then enjoying it's last bursts of chart domination), Chrysalis Records and possibly Benatar herself ignored some of her strongest singles and sucked the fun right out of that decade-spanning retrospective. Still, being the only official, single disc Benatar collection, it went on to be a platinum seller.
Cut ahead nearly 16 years. The worldwide market has been flooded with no fewer than 30 generic "EMI Special Markets" compilations, a result of Chrysalis Records having folded in the early 90s, leaving their entire back catalog vulernable to being, er, whored-out. All such releases notoriously feature hideous, cheap inserts, random track selection and poor sound quality recycled from old analog transfers. They've certainly cooled many peoples desire for "yet another" greatest hits disc (most of all, probably her fans), but Capitol Records has now finally issued the DEFINITIVE Pat Benatar compilation.
You need this CD.
Pat Benatar: Greatest Hits is her first official single disc collection since Best Shots. It features all 12 songs included on that release (the final 3 were CD-only bonus cuts drawn from the One Love single, tacked on to entice buyers to opt for the growing compact disc market), plus 8 additional hits inexplicably omitted from that release.
All 15 top of her top 40 Billboard singles are here along with other key tracks, and they sound fantastic. This isn't a repackaging of the same old tracks to make a quick dollar. Clocking in a mere 10 second under maximum disc capacity (that's 79:50), all tracks have been digitally remasted and given a punch previously unheard on any past release. Capitol has successfully brought these tracks up to todays standards. This also marks the first ever appearance of the superior "Treat Me Right" single remix on compact disc.
The artwork and layout is superb, featuring an iconic selection of photos presented on metallic silver and black stock, topped off with simple red and white lettering. The booklet contains a well-written bio summing up Pat's importance to the world of music, as well as a selection of lengthy tributes from the likes of Tori Amos, Lisa Marie Presley, plus (finally) an accurate and detailed Billboard chart history.
This is the only Pat Benatar CD a casual listener will ever need, and there's plenty here to keep fans happy until Capitol rolls out the full-length album remasters series.
Bravo.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
by Pat Benatar 
