Cliff Richard : King of UK music

Cliff Richard is the most sucessfull domestic recoring artist of all-time with over 120 U.K hit singles under his belt, over the last 6 decades. This is a good sampler.

Great overview of Cliff's career

Compiling a collection of Cliff's hits on just one or two CD's is never easy, because there are so many good ones as the six CD boxed set (Singles collection) demonstrates. Most people really don't want that many CD's by one singer, even one as brilliant as Cliff. This double CD contains a reasonable selection of his UK hits from 1958 to 2000 that will satisfy most people. If you are looking for a particular song that isn't here or if you are only interested in a particular period of his career, there are many other Clifftastic compilations around quite apart from that boxed set.

Cliff had his greatest commercial successes in the fifties and sixties but of the 46 tracks here, only 20 are from that part of his career. Perhaps the compilers felt that anybody who wanted those songs already had them anyway, but it is worth noting that Voice in the wilderness, Fall in love with you, Nine times out of ten, Theme for a dream, A girl like you, When the girl in your arms, I'm looking out the window, Lucky lips, Twelfth of never, Wind me up and Congratulations are among the major sixties UK hits (all top four or higher) that were left out of this collection. Some of these songs are not as popular as they once were and were left out for that reason, but I don't believe all of them fit that description.

26 tracks represent the seventies onwards, culminating in The millennium prayer - actually Auld lang syne sung to the tune of The Lord's prayer (December 2000). While this period contained many more Cliff hits in total than the fifties and sixties, there were plenty of minor hits among them. Every UK top ten solo hit is included from 1973 (Power to all our friends) onwards.

As an overview of Cliff's career, this is brilliant despite the fact that I would have preferred more sixties songs and fewer from the eighties and nineties. In any case, you might not agree with me. If you only want one collection of Cliff's music and you are interested in his whole career, choose this or the boxed set according to how much of his music you want.

Not the whole but this is enough for starters

This has to be one of the most essential greatest hits collections around. Cliff is one of the most versatile people in pop and this record has many of his best moments from his rock n' roll debut, through his boy band style chart busters, his religious hits, his rock return in the mid '70s and the later songs that made him into the new Santa Claus. He is a much underrated artist mainly due to those people who judge music by lifestyle rather than sound. But he is still one of the UK's top legends. May he carry on!