Reflections - A Retrospective [CD]

Don't get me wrong, this is a great collection of Mary J Blige songs, but it definitely shouldn't be called "The Greatest Hits". If it were just a retrospective of her career so far then it's not a bad choice of tracks but there are so many that have been missed out which would have made this an amazing and must-have album. The addition of the 4 new tracks adds a big incentive to buy, as all of them are first class, especially the opener, which desrcibes how far Blige has come in her career, but it's after these that you begin to wonder who chose the rest. Where is "You Remind Me", "Reminisce", "Sweet Thing" and "Love No Limit" from "What's the 411?" (still Mary's most acclaimed work)? Where is "Mary Jane (All Night Long)" and "(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman" from "My Life"? The biggest omission of all has to be "Everything" (a song most people would associate most highly with MJB, and a song which was her highest charting position in the UK, which did not feature another artist). Also missing is "I Can Love You", "Love Is All We Need" and "Seven Days" from "Share My World", "Misty Blue" from "The Tour", "All That I Can Say", "Deep Inside" and "Your Child" from "Mary", "Dance For Me", Rainy Dayz" and "No More Drama (Remix)" from "No More Drama", as well as "Love @ 1st Sight", "Ooh", "Not Today", and "It's Wrap", all ignored from the less than successful "Love & Life" album, but still great stand alone singles. Then finally, her most acclaimed and successful album in over ten years and still two of the biggest hits from "The Beakthrough" are ignored ("Enough Cryin'" and "Take Me As I Am"!) when a track which wasn't even released is added ("No One Will Do"). What my point is how much more of an incredible and essential album this should have been. I'm glad they acknowledged the duets with Method Man and Wyclef, but this shouldn't have been at the expense of her own solo work. This should have been a double CD, if not triple with bonus remixes, which she became famous for during the "Mary" period, documenting this amazing talent from 1991 to now, instead it's just a brief stop-gap and only really worth buying to hear the new material.

Firstly it's not the songs on here that are lacking, it's the number of them, although there are several good moments on this album, like `Family Affair', Mo More Drama, 911, I'm Going Down, Be Without you and Not Gon' Cry, it's still not enough and there's certainly a lot missing, I didn't think that much to the new songs either, although I liked the alternate solo verson of `One', which was a bit of a surprise since it was listed as a duet, but overall i think that if Mary intended this as a greatest hits album, then she should have followed Whitney's example, and gone for a 2-disc set with the ballads on one CD, and the up-tempo songs on the other, i think this technique would have worked really well for Mary, but as it is only a retrospective, in other words an overview then not bad, but i hope if they release a second collection, it will have a whole lot more songs on it and cover every single album, because after buying this this CD, i did feel slightly cheated.

I am hoping that this is alright, I brought it for my eldest daughter for Christmas, she hasn't said that she doesn't like it, so hopefully no news is good news.