The Shadows - Shadows' Greatest Hits [Expanded] (CD)

All Music Guide

Greatest Hits is a straightforward summary of the Shadows' first three years of habitual hitmaking, opening with the pounding flurry of "Apache" and then tracing through the next eight smash singles, with a handful of attendant Bsides (and one EP cut, the title track from The Boys) to round the package out. There is no denying the sheer brilliance of this early sequence. Hits like "Wonderful Land," "FBI," and "Man of Mystery" utterly rewrote the guitar's role in rock, not only musically, but culturally as well. Unquestionably, the Shadows' importance and impact diminished as the years passed, but at the outset of their career the period documented here they were untouchable. It is for that reason that Greatest Hits is still regarded in some quarters as the finest Shadows album of them all, an accolade that no other compilation (and goodness knows, there have been enough of them) has ever been able to dismiss. Even the sleeve screams "masterpiece." [The 2004 reissue of Greatest Hits included the entire set in both stereo and mono mixes.]

- Dave Thompson, All Music Guide