The Best of Van Morrison

Moondance Van Morrison went a long way towards defining his wild Irish heart with his first two classic albums: the brooding, introspective Astral Weeks (1968), and the expansive, swinging Moondance. If the first was the work of a poet, its sequel was the statement of a musician and bandle...	The Best of Van Morrison Volume 3 Navigating Van Morrison's extensive catalog since 1993 is a formidable task even diehard fans might not want to attempt. The Irish icon has flirted with blues, jazz, country, pop, Celtic, and his own style of indescribable into-the-mystic spiritually-oriented poetic folk on his n...	The Best of Van Morrison, Vol. 2 Compiled by Morrison himself, this 1993 collection focuses mainly on his work from 1984-1991. Representing a period during which Morrison scored very few popular hits, the majority of the record's 15 tracks are probably fairly obscure to people other than diehard fans. Neverthele...	Van Morrison At The Movies: Soundtrack Hits If Hollywood's marriage with pop music is too often a marketing-driven shotgun affair, there remain musicians whose artistry can't help but elevate whatever film project they're associated with. This 19-track compendium underscores that notion, gathering a career-spanning collec...	Still on Top: The Greatest Hits THE FIRST-EVER CAREER-SPANNING SINGLE DISC GREATEST HITS COLLECTION FROM ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL ARTISTS OF OUR TIME One of the best-selling albums of the Nineties, the five-times-platinum, 1990-issued The Best Of Van Morrison, is out of print. For a new, career-spanning coll...
Astral Weeks Never mind that Van Morrison is one of the most indelible songwriters of the 20th century--take each album on its own terms. On 1968's seminal Astral Weeks, a twentysomething Van Morrison can be found belting his gospelly, bluesy vocals in just as fine a form as he would be 20 ye...	Chronicle, Vol. 1: The 20 Greatest Hits Few bands of the 1960s retained as much a sense of the roots of rock and roll as did Creedence Clearwater Revival. Their music is rife with country, rockabilly, and R&B influences, a combination that produced several hit singles--most of which are present on this collection. Thes...	Keep It Simple Those familiar with Van Morrison's ever mercurial muse could hardly have been surprised when he turned up on the artistically centered, avant-country label Lost Highway to pay tribute to a era-spanning slate of country icons on the Nashville imprint's `06 collection, Pay the Dev...	Bob Seger - Greatest Hits Bob Seger has racked up a lot of worthy tracks over the years, but it took until 1994 for a greatest hits package to appear. Voilà. The bad news: We're missing an awful lot of songs here. Night Moves is Seger's crit-pick album, and a great place to start if you don't have any Se...	Tupelo Honey Van Morrison's "Caledonia soul"--his unique blend of Irish mysticism and spiritual questing, literary allusion and blue-eyed R&B--can be as beautiful and deeply emotional as any music ever made. That's certainly the case on 1971's Tupelo Honey, one of the finest albums of Morriso...

Classic Morrison
Van listened to the old bluesmen in his youth back in Ireland. You can hear those influences when Van sings. This CD is excellent because it has all of the songs that van is famous for.

A fantastic introduction to Van the Man
People who complain about this collection- pointing out that no single disc compilation can give a definitive portrait of Van Morrison's entire career, that it tends to ignore the man's more challenging and artistically minded work, that its haphazard sequencing makes it hard to get a feel for his evolution as a musician, etc.- seem to be ignoring one thing: this disc is a wonderful listen. No, it isn't definitive. It doesn't even try to be. It's supposed to be an accessible introduction, a way into Van Morrison's large and often daunting discography, a means of convincing you to drop your hard-earned cash on records like Moondance and Tupelo Honey and Astral Weeks and perhaps even the early albums when Van was a member of the garage band Them (thanks to the inclusion of the stunningly cathartic "Gloria," which epitomizes rock 'n' roll in its rawest form while conveying the feeling of unbottled teenage angst- it should give anyone who was or is a child goosebumps). And in that, it's incredibly successful. This disc is so fun to listen to that you're probably gonna want to run out and get at least three more Van albums before you've even listened to half of this thing. And honestly, how can you resist a single collection of songs that includes "Bright Side Of The Road," "Gloria," "Moondance," "Baby Please Don't Go," "Have I Told You Lately," "Brown Eyed Girl," and "Sweet Thing?" And that's just the first seven songs! The album does lose a bit of energy after that, and it is admittedly missing a few classics, but for the most part it's a great listen. You'll love it, trust me.

Fantastic compilation
This compilation has arguably Van Morrisons best work. My personal favorites: Moondance (of course!!!), Brown Eyed Girl, Sweet Thing, Warm Love, Jackie Wilson Said, Full Force Gail, Here Comes The Night, Domino, and Whenever God Shines His Light. There are a number of other great songs as well as those I listed. The one song I love that is not on this CD is Crazy Love. It is on the CD titled "Moondance" which also has some other great songs like Caravan, Into The Mystic, and Glad Tidings. I put this CD in and I just feel good. Van Morrison just does that to me.

It says the BEST of Van Morrison
The best thing about this album, eh CD, is that you may buy it for the hit songs that are included. If you do, you are in for a wonderful discovery, the other music on this CD is even better then the hits!! I have read this was produced without Van's help or even approval. Much has also been written about the "flow" of the songs. In the end it's all about the music, and this is a GREAT CD. Unless you do not like this genre of music at all (I guess metal heads beware), you will find much to like and possibly love about it. As someone else said in their review, I have given it as a gift frequently, and it's always been appreciatted. So if you are still on the fence, jump in and buy it. Signed Don Morrison (Van's brother). JK

Van the man...
There's no organization to the music on this cd which has always been one of the great joys of a Van Morrison release where one song seems to lead to another and the sound as a whole is like listening to one inspiring arrangement but even with that in mind this collection is wonderful. Rather then having one large spiritual experience, you get 20 small spiritual miracles. Because to me, Van's music has always been so full of soul it is like a spiritual ride.