February 24, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drd700/d773/d77308sd0i3.jpg All the Way: A Decade of Song (Nov 16, 1999) 4 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine There aren't a lot of greatest-hits albums with seven new songs, which is exactly what All the Way: A Decade of Song is. There are just nine hits on this hits collection, and of those, only a handful — "If You Asked Me To," "Beauty and the Beast," "The Power of Love," "Because You Loved Me," "It's All Coming Back to Me Now," and "My Heart Will Go On" — were huge hits in the U.S. Her first American hit, "Where Does My Heart Beat Now," isn't here, nor is her duet with Barbra Streisand, "Tell Him." Naturally, this means it's not a definitive collection, but rather an unsatisfying album that feels suspiciously like a piece of product. The best of the hits, like the Meat Loaf-ian epic "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" and "My Heart Will Go On," are certainly among the best adult contemporary songs of the decade, and the new stuff would pale in comparison, even if it was very good — which, by and large, it is not. Two numbers, the danceable "That's the Way it Is" and the pretty ballad "If Walls Could Talk," work, but the cover of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" falls flat and "All the Way," complete with old vocals from Sinatra, is a disaster. The remaining three aren't bad, but they're not particularly memorable, especially compared to the hits. And that's the problem with All the Way — if it had been a straight hits collection, with "That's the Way it Is" and "If Walls Could Talk" added to the end, it would have been fine, but padding it with nearly a full album worth of new material hurts it.
February 24, 200718 yr Author http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/dre300/e309/e309037w6qi.jpg The Collector's Series, Vol. 1 (Oct 24, 2000) 2 Stars Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine The title of The Collector's Series, Vol. 1 makes the compilation seem as if it's filled with Celine Dion rarities, but that's not entirely true. There are some oddities here, such as "The Power of the Dream" from the opening ceremony of the 1996 Olympics, but the album is really a way to fill gaps left by Dion's hits collection, All the Way: A Decade of Song — the many duets, French and Spanish songs, and previously unheard in the U.S. tracks are here to pad out the running time. As such, it's a real hodgepodge, with singles like "Where Does My Heart Beat Now" and "Falling Into You" overshadowing the rest of the album. Perhaps casual fans will want this as a way of getting the glaring omissions from the hits collection, but it has too many inconsequential obscurities to make it easy listening for them. So, it does wind up being more for the collectors — but even they will probably wonder why it couldn't be nothing but rarities, which would have served them better. A real mixed bag,
February 24, 200718 yr Thanks soooooooooo much for posting these. Much Fabness :wub: Brilliant reviews.
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