Garth Brooks - The Ultimate Hits It IS The Ultimate 3 CD / DVD Set

I have been a Garth fan for a very long time. I have many of his CD’s and listen to his music very often. I, of course have my favorite songs, but I haven’t found one yet that I don’t like.

For my birthday my darling husband :::waves to PaySo::: bought me the newest CD, Garth Brooks The Ultimate Hits. Wow, am I impressed with this 2 CD 1 DVD set.

There are 34 songs on the two CD’s and the DVD features Garth performing at various concerts, 31 songs. The performances are from quite a few concerts and even within a song they show him in different settings and different concerts. Some of that I liked but in a few songs it just didn’t seem to fit right.

Of course I loved watching him sing my very favorite song The River and could watch, listen to that song over and over and over.

Before I get in to the songs on this set I will say that my one and only con is that on the back of the package where the songs are listed half of it is gray and half of it is black. The song lists are placed on both colors using white text. It is very easy to read on the black background but these old eyes are having devil of a time trying to read the white on gray. I wish they had used black text rather than the white on this section.


The CD Songs

1. Ain’t Going Down (Til the Sun Comes Up)
2. Friends In Low Places
3. Shameless
4. Two of Kind, Workin’ On a Full House
5. Beaches of Cheyenne
6. If Tomorrow Never Comes
7. Papa Loved Mama
8. New - More Than A Memory
9. Good Ride Cowboy
10. In Another’s Eyes (with Trisha Yearwood)
11. The Fever
12. New- Midnight Sun
13. Learning to Live Again
14. Longneck Bottle (with Steve Warner)
15. To Make You Feel My Love
16. We Shall Be Free
17. The Dance

Disc 2 - 63 minutes:
1. Callin’ Baton Rouge
2. Two Pina Coladas
3. The Thunder Rolls
4. That Summer
5. The River
6. Beer Run (with George Jones)
7. Unanswered Prayers
8. Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)
9. New - Workin’ For A Livin’ (duet with Huey Lewis)
10. What’s She Doin’ Now
11. When You Come Back To Me Again
12. Standing Outside the Fire
13. American Honky Tonk Bar Association
14. The Change
15. Rodeo
16. Wrapped Up In You
Bonus Track – Leave A Light On

The DVD contains all of the same songs, except for the Bonus Track – Leave A Light On.


My Favorites

Okay, now this is going to be hard. Narrowing this CD down to a manageable amount of songs that I call my favorites. I love them all but will try to pick out ones that can really rock my country world.

First and foremost is my favorite Garth song, The River. This song starts with a very slow quiet warm up as the song opens with soft guitar playing and then we hear that voice singing of life and how we must learn from the past and yet keep fighting to move forward. He sings of the river and how he will sail his vessel. I have used this as a tag line in some groups I’ve been part of and have had people think I sailed. I like this line because it is how I like to think of dealing with life, always sailing always trudging forward. Anyway, this is a beautiful song that I’ve instructed my family to play at my funeral because I will have reached my final destination at that point.

Another of my favorites is Unanswered Prayers. This is a slow song where realizing that sometimes what we think we want isn’t what would actually be best for us and the Lord knows when not to answer our prayers, at least not in the way we think they should be answered. This is a slower tempo song with lots of strumming of the guitar and a soft background to Garth’s almost spoken beautiful voice.

Wrapped Up In You has a different style of beat to it than most of the songs on this CD. It has a real tap, tap, tap sound and the lyrics are sung in this same way. This is a song of giving oneself totally to another. It is a little hokey, but I like the beat and the words are the kind anyone would like to hear from someone else. Complete love, complete devotion, completely wrapped up in them. There is a great harmonica solo in it as well that just catches my ear and makes me tap my toe to it.

Another of my favorites is Shameless. The soft piano playing, the guitar playing and Garth singing about being Shameless for the way he loves someone and satisfying her in any way that she needs. Well what women wouldn’t melt at that message? I love how this song builds and builds, starting out slow and soft and growing in to an almost hard sound as he belts out the words, especially the word ‘shameless’. Fantastic music and fantastic message sung in Garth’s fantastic voice.


Newer Stuff

While Garth is semi-retired I’m always happy when I hear he is doing something new. He even did a few concerts recently that my daughters and I really wanted to go to…but an 800 mile road trip during the week sounded like a bit much for us.

More Than A Memory hit #1 on the Country charts and is Garth’s first #1 in a few years. This is a song of lost love and the feeling that you’ll never get over the feelings.

Is when your dialing 6 numbers just to hang up the phone.
Driving cross town just to see if she's home.
Waking a friend in the dead of night, just to hear 'em say it's gonna be alright.
When your finding things to do not to fall asleep cuz you know she'll be there in your dreams.
Thats when she's
more than a memory

I’m sure we’ve all had that lost love that remains in our hearts and this song sings of the place that they will always be, in one way or another.

Workin’ for a Livin’ is an okay new song but it sounds more pop than country to me and although I like it, I think it’ll take me a little bit to really connect with this song. There is background singers behind Garth. This song starts with the sound of a harmonica and then the drums take over. It is a peppy song and like I said, it isn’t one of my favorites yet, but of course that is subject to change. The song is about….working for a living. Pretty simple concept there.

Leave the Light On is the bonus track on this set and I’ve listened to it several times and am really loving it. This is another love song with a soft tempo and some higher notes reached. Lots of piano and this one also has background singers harmonizing with Garth.


Nuts & Bolts

The liner notes for this set are really great and include lots of great pictures of Garth as well as all the lyrics to the songs. I love when lyrics are included, even though I have to use a magnifying glass most of the time to see them. Including all of them the text had to be very small in order to get them all in, but I am happy they are there.

Garth Brooks Ultimate Hits was produced by Pearl Records and released November 6, 2007.

This set was a gift, but I believe it can be purchased for under $20.00. What a great deal…….hours and hours of music and video to enjoy, especially if you are a die hard Garth fan, like me!