E - Music Zone

This two-disc set from Madacy couldn't really go wrong, since it draws its selections from Rod Stewart's run of four magnificent albums for Mercury Records that began in 1969 with The Rod Stewart Album and ended with 1972's Never a Dull Moment and Stewart's departure for Warner Brothers. Possessing one of the greatest voices in rock history, a hoarse, Sam Cooke-like purr that somehow manages to roll both joy and weariness into the same notes at once, Stewart was at the peak of his game for Mercury, and nearly every one of these 22 tracks is a classic, a level of excellence that the singer has only occasionally reached since then. With cuts like "Every Picture Tells a Story," "Cut Across Shorty," "Maggie Mae," and his definitive cover of Tim Hardin's "Reason to Believe," this anthology will disappoint no one, but then, why not just go ahead and get his four Mercury albums in their entirety for even more fun?