Buy Keith Urban - Greatest Hits
This greatest hits album may leave you wondering if Keith Urban should give his guitar to someone who's actually going to use it to make music worth listening to?
As a general rule, artists release greatest hits collections when they are a) out of ideas or b) in the process of reinventing themselves. Keith Urban's latest offering has left this reviewer desperately hoping that it is b) in this situation. The opening track, Romeo's Tune (which boasts an infectious piano riff and sing-along chorus), would have been an excellent choice to begin this album under ordinary circumstances. However, even if listeners had no idea who originally wrote and recorded this song (Steve Forbert in 1979, incidentally), it is blatantly obvious this is not a Keith Urban song. The fact that Urban uses another artist's song to open his greatest hits collection should immediately concern to anyone thinking of purchasing this album.
Listening to this CD is more or less the equivalent of tuning into your local easy-listening radio station. The songs, with their corny, cliched lyrics - like "It'll run us till we're ragged/It'll harden our hearts" and "I want to love somebody/Love somebody like you" - are incredibly easy to tune out to. Even when a banjo is permitted to feature, supposedly to add interest to an otherwise bland song, it is only to repeat the same riff, ad nauseam.
What this record highlights is the fact that Urban is a safe performer and songwriter. With tracks spanning a 10-year recording career it is interesting, not to mention disappointing, to discover that this artist has not evolved much (if at all!) since his humble beginnings. This reviewer cannot help but feel that Urban, who seems to be producing music for no other purpose than to enhance his media status, would be much better off flicking his sculpted hair around as a male model.
Buy Keith Urban - Greatest Hits
01 Romeo's Tune
02 Got It Right This Time (The Celebration)
03 I Told You So
04 Stupid Boy
05 Better Life
06 Making Memories of Us
07 Once In A Lifetime
08 Tonight I Wanna Cry
09 You're My Better Half
10 Days Go By
11 But For The Grace Of God
12 You'll Think Of Me
13 Who Wouldn't Wanna Be Me
14 Raining on Sunday
15 Where The Blacktop Ends
16 .Your Everything
17 Somebody Like You
18 Everybody
Keith Urban - Greatest Hits
