More essential than U.S. Complete Greatest Hits release.

This CD is probably about the best Foreigner compilation since The Best & Beyond. The key item here though is the bonus track, the unplugged version of "Urgent" recorded in the BBC. It's quite different from the usual sounding unplugged song, featuring instruments Foreigner's never used before, such as the accordion taking the place of the synths & almost giving it a John Mellencamp "Paper In Fire" era sound in places. Definitely a must have for the die hard Foreigner collector. Oh, and regarding the songs chosen, this CD was designed for the overseas market, where the hit singles were sometimes different from those released in the U.S.

This takes me back

There are several Foreigner compilations on the shelves these days, and they all have names like 'Very Best', 'Complete' and so on. This one purports to be 'Definitive', and it's pretty darn close in my opinion.

I was a big Foreigner fan when I was growing up in the 80s, but I eventually turned into something of a metalhead. On a whim I picked up this CD recently, and it did not disappoint. I felt like a kid again hearing such awesome and emotive rock tracks like 'I Want to Know What Love Is', 'That Was Yesterday', 'Say you Will', 'Hot Blooded' etc etc etc. There is an embarassment of riches on this album, and there are no weak songs. Some may take a little longer to get into, but I am confident that if you like your soft rock and AOR you will get a lot of play out of this CD. Only die hard fanatics and nitpickers will not be satisfied. Casual fans should be thrilled with this one.

Why Did They Have to Assemble Such a Scattershot Collection?

And why does Foreigner have to continue releasing greatest hits collections that practically no one will care about? It's not just the fact that the band has released yet another hits compilation- it's that this collection does not live up to its title at all, let alone is absolutely worthless for the casual fan.

It was as if the band decided to take all of their hits and key album tracks together, randomly select twenty of those songs for this collection, and then put those twenty songs in a shuffle play mode. And with this order, one would think of Foreigner as a ballad group if they had not the slightest idea of the band before listening to this. (The first hard rock tune does not come until track seven, for crying out loud!) The fact that most of the band's hits are actually here, however, does not make this terrible compiling process any more forgivable. It also hurts that some little-known tunes ("A Love in Vain" and the MR. MOONLIGHT artifact "White Lie") actually creeped into this mess, thus putting even more botches into this concoction of songs. And who on God's green earth today would care about their BBC live recording of "Urgent" (which was probably a bonus we all would SO be interested in)?

I have an alternative for this if you somehow do not care about randomly ordered collections: buy THE VERY BEST...AND BEYOND or COMPLETE GREATEST HITS. When you are about to play either of those compilations, remember to turn the shuffle button on first.