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THE OAK RIDGE BOYS: 20th CENTURY MASTERS THE MILLENNIUM COLLECTION
With the 20th century coming to a close, here's a great marketing ploy....let's release over 600 different artists who impacted music in the last 100 years! Yeah, great idea, as the series has sold over 9 million CDs. The Oak Ridge Boys were included in this series, and rightfully so. The string of #1 hits the Oaks had in the 70's and 80's depict a successful run that most artists only dream of.
The 12 songs picked for this greatest hits compilation may as well been drawn out of a hat. How in the world do you pick the 12 best songs from a group like The Oak Ridge Boys? Clearly, the Oaks have far more than 12 songs that could have appeared on this collection, which begs the statement....this CD is just too darn short!!! A rock band like Kiss has three volumes of this CD to cover their career, and they never had a #1 hit!!! How do the Oak Ridge Boys not have 3, 4 or 5 volumes of this CD series???
At any rate, I'm glad the Boys were included in this series, as they should have been. But with the many greatest hits compilations that MCA/Universal has released over the years, this particular CD pales in comparison to all of them. Unless you absolutely have to own everything of The Oak Ridge Boys, this CD really offers nothing for the die hard fan. And it's not really the CD that a new fan wants to get for a good overview of The Oaks illustrious career.
Outstanding Cuts:
all 12 songs here are pure magic
Cut Outs:
not a one....this CD is just waaaay too short
The Oak Ridge Boys deserve to have at least one Millennium
Collection released (if not more), but should it be done to accommodate MCA's
increasingly cheap approach to older artists?
This collection would not be quite too bad if MCA hadn't
released the CD, Collection, nearly 10 years earlier. At least that
package got original artwork and liner notes. When it became inevitable that the
Oaks needed a Millennium Collection, what did MCA do? They simply pulled the
1992 Collection CD off the market (which had been certified Gold not too
long before), slapped an old album photo on it (the original cover for
American Made, to be exact), and ever so slightly edited the track list. The
result: a POOR excuse for a new release. All but one of the songs on this
release appeared on Collection ("Bobbie Sue," conspicuously absent from
the prior release, and "Make My Life With You" are the only additions).
Amazingly, two of the Oaks' biggest hits, "Y'all Come Back Saloon" and "Thank
God For Kids" were cut altogether (I guess to save even more money).
Even the liner notes are nearly identical to the '92 release.
I see no reason for this total lack of concern for a top-notch group such as the
Oaks. Since they have so many more hits, perhaps MCA will consider doing a
Volume Two Millennium release (with a NEW cover photo and DIFFERENT song
line-up!!)
---Kyle Boreing