All-Time Greatest Hits

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 All-Time Greatest Hits, a generous collection of 23 hits from the '60s and '70s. A consistent bugaboo with Diamond compilations has been licensing, but this one does a very nice job of sampling from all of Neil's major labels, including Bang, Uni, MCA, and Columbia. The late-'70s hits -- "Forever in Blue Jeans," "Beautiful Noise," "America" -- are scattered throughout the compilation; the Uni/MCA sides ("Cracklin' Rosie," "Sweet Caroline," "Holly Holy," "Shilo," "Play Me") are the anchor of the comp, and the Bang 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 Diamond's catalog. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine