Search - Don Mclean :: American Pie Best of

This is the least comprehensive Don McLean hits collection

Lawrance M. Bernabo | The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota | 11/27/2003

(3 out of 5 stars)

"There are legions of one hit wonders who had their one big hit and disappeared from the music scene. When Don McLean burst upon the charts with "American Pie" there was a good chance that he might quickly disappear as well since it was fairly obvious that the odds were against him ever having a bigger hit. But while McLean never had another hit as popular he certainly proved he had more than one great song in him when he wrote "Vincent" (a.k.a. "Starry Starry Night") and a couple of very good songs in "And I Love You So" and "Castles in the Air." I even like his "Driedel" song. Unfortunately, this import collection of McLean's hits misses out on his cover of Roy Orbison's "Crying," which makes this a lesser collection that the original 10-track hits album from EMI and is not even worth comparing to "The Very Best of Don McLean," which has 16-tracks, including all of the above and a new version of "American Pie." So, while there are songs on this album that are not worth listening to more than once, but the ones that are good are simply great. McLean is clearly one of those artists where you just need his "Best of" album, but you still want to be selective on that score, as indicated above. Final Note: I always thought that the name of the character of Vincent on television's "Beauty and the Beast" was taken from McLean's song given the line: "But I could have told you, Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.""