Average Rating: 
Rating:  - GREAT SONGS, INCOMPLETE ALBUM
Advice to new fans: It will be much more rewarding to but Springsteen's original studio albums. I am a huge Bruce Springsteen fan, and there really isn't a bad cut on this album...but any Springsteen fan cannot deny that there are many, many "hits" missing. The new material recorded for the album is great stuff, but if this is supposed to be a greatest hits album, it should have included the obvious hits "Cover Me", "I'm On Fire", "I'm Going Down", "Tunnel Of Love", "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out"...the songs we hear on the radio...and maybe even an earlier cut like "Growing Up", just for some pre-Born To Run material. Again, a fun listen, but it's a bit dissapointing considering this is likely to be the only Boss cd that a lot of people from my generation will ever own (I'm 23).
Rating: - Not Quite Perfect but Gets It Mostly Right
"Greatest Hits" does a nice job of capturing the breadth of Springsteen's mythic career from "Born to Run" through his commercial apex ('Born in the USA'), through his double solo releases ("Brilliant Disguise" and "Human Touch") through his movie hits ("Secret Garden" from 'Jery Maguire' and the title track from "Streets of Philly"). Squeezing the Boss' best onto a single disk is a daunting task, but Bruce and John Landau did a good job.The Good - the inclusion of 5 of my favorite Springsteen songs - the anthemic 'Born to Run', the gut-wrenching 'The River', the haunting 'Atlantic City', the transcendent 'Born in the USA' and the uplifting 'Better Days'. Though not every song hits me like these do, there is not alot of fat in-between either. The Bad - I find the trend of tacking newly recorded tracks onto Greatest Hits CDs to be a bad idea. The 3 on this one ('Murder Incorporated', 'Blood Brothers', 'This Hard Land') are not bad, but sound out of place among the deserving "greatest" hits.I would have replaced them with 'Rosalita', 'She's the One' and a live version of 'Jersey Girl' to make this a 5-star CD (finding a way to pack 'JungleLand' would only elevate it to near perfection). Highly recommended despite its flaws and omissions. Also recommeded: "Blood Brothers" (DVD) which documents the 1995 reunion of Bruce and the E Street Band to record the 3 new songs for the "Greatest Hits" CD.
Rating: - A very good "Cliff's Notes" Springsteen summary.
I will leave it to others to say whether a Bruce Springsteen box set is overdue. Leaving that issue aside, I feel that this CD is just fine, if you aren't wishing it to be something more than what it is.Of course, most of the obvious hits are there -- "Born to Run", "The River", "Hungry Heart", etc. What is the most striking inclusion on the album is "Atlantic City", a deeply depressing song from the "Nebraska" album that didn't chart high enough to really be considered a "greatest hit". However, this dour song sets up the last half of the album beautifully -- the next songs are his "Born in the USA" hits, all of which are either upbeat or, at least in the case of the "USA" title track, highly spirited. For the final stretch of this album, it's a mix of post-"USA" hits that define a change in Springsteen's attitude. Many of the lyrics from songs such as "Better Days" and "Human Touch" show a more reflective songwriter. For those of us living the second half of our lives, this has particular significance. The last few songs are new ones, one of which is "Secret Garden", which would be used prominently shortly thereafter in the movie "Jerry MacGuire". This isn't to put a gravestone on Bruce's career, but this album from the mid-90s might provide the essential Springsteen, if not the comprehensive Springsteen.
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