All-Time Greatest Hits
was released on
Capitol Records
, a label
Neil Diamond
never recorded for, but
Universal
-- who owned the recordings
Diamond
made for both
Uni
and
MCA
-- selected this as the imprint for 2014's
, a generous collection of 23 hits from the '60s and '70s. A consistent bugaboo with
compilations has been licensing, but this one does a very nice job of sampling from all of
Neil
's major labels, including
Bang
,
, and
Columbia
. The late-'70s hits -- "Forever in Blue Jeans," "Beautiful Noise," "America" -- are scattered throughout the compilation; the
/
sides ("Cracklin' Rosie," "Sweet Caroline," "Holly Holy," "Shilo," "Play Me") are the anchor of the comp, and the
singles are grouped together toward the end. True, the collection might've been better served if it was sequenced chronologically, but this has the vast majority of the big hits on a single disc, and that's been hard to find in
's catalog. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine