Track Listing

1. American Pie
2. Vincent
3. And I Love You So
4. Castles in the Air
5. Love Hurts
6. Crossroads
7. The Birthday Song
8. It Doesn't Matter Anymore
9. Crying
10. It's a Beautiful Life
11. Prime Time
12. Winterwood
13. Crying In The Chapel
14. Wonderful Baby
15. Everyday
16. Fool's Paradise
17. Tapestry
18. Sittin' On Top Of The World

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5129 in Music
• Released on: 2001-10-15
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

I hate, hate, hate, hate Don Mclean
Van Gogh's paintings are absolutely awe inspiring, frightening, wonderful, fevered... So why is Vincent, one of the track on this album, such an awful misguided piece of saccharine music.

I've always absolutely loathed the false sentiment in that song and its utter reliance on the cliché of the artist genius on the edge of madness.

When I hear it I want to go and commit mass murder, I really do. He has absolutely no insight here into Van Gogh's inner life, none of us do. It is possible that Van Gogh was an ego driven monster. He was certainly capable of being deeply unpleasant and I just hate the way that Mclean here is reducing him to a one dimensional cliché. The artist suffering for his art... Arrggghh!

It's vile and I hate it, really. In the end Mclean's song is just bad art. The music is so counter to Van Gogh's febrile imagination, that it makes me wonder if he's ever actually really looked at one of his paintings.

Mclean is responsible for some of the worst crimes in music of all time and they are all here: American Pie, Vincent, Love Hurts, Crying... I could go on. Really, he's no better than the Carpenters (don't tell me you like them?!). Completely unable to look at the world and see it for what it is. Ultimately I find his vision pedestrian, and his arrangements conventional, predictable and anodyne.

I hope whoever buys this album and enjoys the music therein never comes anywhere near me. But some praise should go to this collection for helping me fully understand just what it is I dislike so much about Mclean's music and indeed Mclean the man.

Who ate all the pies?
American Pie is a well known and loved clasic. What we do not have here is a collection of similar tracks. Indeed, from the evidence here, you'd have to assume that American Pie was some sort of aberation.

This is not to say that the other tracks are not good, they are just more soulful and spiritual than you might expect.

My very favourite is Castles in the Air, which for me is a more satisfying song than American Pie.

So, why not buy it for what it is - a collection of soulful light rock with american pie too. But don't buy it for what it isn't.

Great introduction to Don's music
Don McLean was a singer-songwriter in the folk-pop tradition who first achieved fame in the early seventies, scoring an American number one hit with American pie (a song later covered superbly by Madonna, for whom it became a British number one), a British number one with Vincent (the song about the painter Van Gogh that begins Starry starry night) and an Irish number one with Mountains of Mourne, though that song is not included here. Perry Como had a huge hit with a cover of And I love you so, another classic song that Don wrote. Among the other notable but less well-known songs written by Don and included here are Winterwood and If we try, both covered by Olivia Newton-John in her early recording career.

Don was also a fine interpreter of other people's songs. His second and last British number one hit was with a revival of Roy Orbison's Crying, a song that was only a minor British hit for Roy in the sixties but which, helped by Don's cover, is now regarded as one of Roy's classic hits. This collection also includes Don's cover of One in a row, an obscure Willie Nelson Song that Trisha Yearwood has also recorded.

There are several compilations of Don's music on the market but this is as good as any.