Clint Black - Greatest Hits, Vol. 2

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Clint Black eventually lost the head-to-head race with Garth Brooks to be the new-country king of the '90s. But this impressive 16-song collection of hits and near-misses culled from Black's half-dozen studio albums and padded with four fair-to-middlin' new songs makes you wonder if the world wouldn't have been better off if Black had won that race. These tracks (all of them written or cowritten by Black and many also produced by him) remind us that in the decade and a half or so since he first hit the charts, he's been a far more adventurous songwriter and stylist than Brooks has ever been. That said, there's a fair amount of chaff mixed with the wheat herein. Many of the newer songs--like "When I Said I Do" (a hit duet with his wife, actress Lisa Hartman), "Little Pearl" (Black's sentimental ode to his new baby daughter), and the cliché-ridden "Money or Love"--tend to drown in either mawkish sentimentality or Black's irritating lyric verbosity. But masterful tracks like "Been There" (a fine duet with Steve Wariner), the swingy "One More Payment," the soulful "(The Lights Are On) Nobody's Home," and an impressive blues version of his 1990 hit "Put Yourself in My Shoes" (featuring a full horn arrangement) remind us how very good Black can be when he's hitting on all cylinders. --Bob Allen