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Critic's Review
Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
Rhino's 2002 collection The Complete Greatest Hits is certainly welcome for presenting what is essentially all of his most popular songs on one 20-track disc, but, the thing is, that's actually a trickier task with Gordon Lightfoot than you might think. On both volumes of Gord's Gold, he re-recorded early songs and mixed them with current hits -- which meant that a new "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" sat next to the hits like "Sundown," but on Gord's Gold, Vol. 2, newer songs (which weren't quite hits) were next to re-recorded versions of staples like "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." This, needless to say, was a bit of an irritant, but this is well-executed enough to make up for the years of awkward compilations by covering everything from his UA recordings to his latter-day recordings for Warner in the mid-'80s. Some might say there should be a little bit more of the earlier songs, but, for most listeners, this will contain all the major items and is as close to definitive as possible to get.
