Alan Jackson - The Essential Alan Jackson Review

This album first appeared on the market as "34 Number Ones" (it also contained a couple other songs that were not singles or yet #1 hits upon release).
The new songs do add an added bonus for long-time fans to pick up this collection of tunes but if you’re a fan who owns all of Alan’s albums (including the previous two Greatest Hits Collections) you probably could simply make a playlist that features all of these songs. If you’re a new fan of Alan Jackson or just a fan of the radio hits then this is the most obvious starting place for Alan fans to go and if his record company Arista/Sony Nashville follows sometime next year with a compilation album featuring the other Top 10 hits of Alan Jackson’s career (something MCA Records did with George Strait after his 50 Number Ones collection) then the average fan will have everything they need to add to 34 Number Ones to have all the essential Alan Jackson hits in their music collections....full text Legacy's 2012 set The Essential Alan Jackson is a retitled reissue of 2010's 34 Number Ones, containing the same songs in the same sequence but bearing a different title and artwork. Upon its release, three of these cuts -- "Ring of Fire," "Look at Me," and the Zac Brown Band duet "As She's Walking Away" -- were new and several of the songs -- "Chasin' That Neon Rainbow," "Here in the Real World," "Tonight I Climbed the Wall," "(Who Says) You Can't Have It All," and "Who's Cheatin' Who" -- never topped the Billboard charts, so the title 34 Number Ones bent the truth a bit, but when placed under the Essential banner alongside all the number one hits from 1991 through 2008, there is no reason to quibble. Jackson certainly has more to offer than just number one singles -- his facility with slow-burning torch songs and gospel is absent here, as are several singles that never reached the upper echelon of the charts ("Pop a Top," "The Talkin' Song Repair Blues," "USA Today," "A Woman's Love," "www.memory," "It's Alright to Be a Redneck," "When Somebody Loves You") -- but by its very length The Essential Alan Jackson suggests the depth and breadth of his body of work, and it's a tremendously entertaining listen to boot....full text