Downtown : The Collection

While this 20-track compilation does cover Petula Clark's most commercially successful era (the early '60s through the early '70s) and has the half-dozen or so hits for which she's most internationally famous, there are some obvious flaws that make it an imperfect best-of. First, it's missing two of her U.S. Top Twenty hits, "Sign of the Times" and "Kiss Me Goodbye" -- inexcusable omissions, even if those weren't hits in the U.K. and this CD is oriented toward the British/European market. Second, in their place are some less interesting covers of songs heavily identified with other stars, such as the Beatles' "Yesterday," Joe South's "Games People Play," and "The Boy from Ipanema" (retitled from the original "The Girl from Ipanema"). If the idea was to put it in a few songs that were less predictable than the usual greatest hits, there were other cuts that would have made much better selections, like the mid-'60s track "Heart" (her best rock-oriented recording) or another of her pre-"Downtown" hits ("Sailor" is the only pre-1964 recording here). This is a decent anthology overall and does have most of the big hits, but there are better Clark best-ofs, even if you're on a budget. ~ Richie Unterberger|