John Mellencamp has been in need of a thorough, career-spanning compilation for a while, and Island/UTV's 2004 release Words & Music: John Mellencamp's Greatest Hits finally fills that gap. His previous hits collection, 1997's The Best That I Could Do, was too short, since he had more hits than could fit on a brief 14-track disc. Words & Music doesn't have the problem of brevity. Spanning 37 songs over two discs, this has nearly all of his charting hits. Radio hits like "Justice and Independence '85" and "Rooty Toot Toot" may be absent, but they're not missed, since all the big hits are here, including "Pink Houses," "Lonely Ol' Night," "Paper in Fire," "Authority Song," "Crumblin' Down," "Small Town," "Hurts So Good," and "Jack & Diane," among many others (including two solid new songs).

Eye of the Zombie is the fourth solo studio album by American singer/songwriter John Fogerty. Released in September 1986, it was his first album with a backing band, and it includes the Creedence-inspired track "Change in the Weather" as well as "Wasn't That a Woman" and "Soda Pop", his first forays into 60s-70s Motown-sounding funk and R&B. The album was not received well by critics and had lukewarm chart success despite a Grammy nomination for Best Male Rock Vocal in 1987. After the Eye of the Zombie tour in 1986, Fogerty did not perform any material from this album in concerts until 2009, when he played "Change in the Weather" at a few shows. The song was also re-recorded in 2009 for The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again and performed live on several late-night TV shows to promote the album.

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers famously played 20 nights at the legendary Fillmore venue in San Francisco in 1997. 6 of the shows were professionally recorded and this release features many of the high points of the residency. The small venue allowed the band to vary their sets each night; they included re-arranged and distinctive versions of their hits, deep cuts, and many cover versions – paying tribute to the artists that Tom and the band had been influenced by. The 4 CD deluxe edition includes fifty-eight tracks pulled primarily from the last six concerts performed in the residency. Those six shows were professionally recorded and tracks from the setlists in those shows have seen previously release on The Live Anthology and the 2020 expanded reissue of Petty's 1994 album Wildflowers.

The self-referential title of Fogerty's first album in three years is no mere play on words; this is as close as he's gotten in a long while to duplicating the loose swamp blues, country, folk, soul and rock that he so memorably created a template for in Creedence Clearwater Revival. Thankfully the advertisement for downloaded ringtones in the disc's booklet is the only contemporary influence creeping into this stripped-down set of rootsy rockers and ballads. Fogerty's voice sounds great throughout; passionate, more committed and comfortable with these songs than he has seemed in years.

Upon its release in the spring of 1997, John Fogerty's long-awaited comeback album Blue Moon Swamp was lavished with praise – it didn't become the crossover hit that Centerfield was, but it earned great reviews and a solid cult audience. Furthermore, his tour – his first ever to feature classic Creedence material – was, if anything, even better received than Blue Moon Swamp, so it made some sense that he quickly released Premonition, his first solo live album, in 1998. Premonition is frighteningly good – Fogerty doesn't sound like a veteran rocker, he sounds nearly as powerful as he did on old Creedence live shows. He also sounds more mature, bringing increased depth to his older songs as he energizes recent material, from "The Old Man Down the Road" to "Swamp River Days." Premonition is essentially the province of dedicated Fogerty fans – there's only one new song, and the differences in the live performances are things only the hardcore will spot – but they'll be delighted with the quality of the music.

John Hiatt's first live album was recorded during a 1994 winter-spring tour of the U.S. (the title is a joke) and finds the singer/songwriter backed by the Guilty Dogs, a guitar-bass-drums trio. He doesn't need any more ammunition than that, not when he's got a set of 15 songs drawn from his last four critically acclaimed albums, including "Thing Called Love" and "Tennessee Plates." Hiatt gives his songs a rougher treatment than some of those who have covered them, his throaty voice giving even love songs like "Angel Eyes" an unsentimental force. In the absence of an A&M best-of, Hiatt Comes Alive at Budokan? makes a good sampler of his work, 1987-1993.

John Hiatt's highest-charting album yet is a step down from the dizzy heights of Bring the Family and Slow Turning, as he abandons his more acid commentaries and turns in a self-deprecating set full of promises of reformation and celebrations of marriage and family life. But the observations remain acute, and Hiatt's singing (so much camouflaged in his early days) is becoming his secret weapon.

After the success of Bring the Family, John Hiatt originally intended to reunite that album's all-star backing band (Ry Cooder, Nick Lowe, and Jim Keltner) for a follow-up. Hiatt's "dream band" proved to be unavailable, and he ended up cutting Slow Turning with his road band, the Goners, but the finished product proves he remembered well the lessons learned from Bring the Family. Slow Turning is a lighter and wittier affair than Bring the Family; the outlaw rocker "Tennessee Plates" and its more subdued companion piece, "Trudy and Dave," are more rambunctious than anything on the previous album, and the tempos are sharper this time out, with a bit less blues and a touch more twang in the melodies.

In 1987, John Hiatt, clean and sober and looking for an American record deal, was asked by an A&R man at a British label to name his dream band. After a little thought, Hiatt replied that if he had his druthers, he'd cut a record with Ry Cooder on guitar, Nick Lowe on bass, and Jim Keltner on drums. To Hiatt's surprise, he discovered all three were willing to work on his next album; Hiatt and his dream band went into an L.A. studio and knocked off Bring the Family in a mere four days, and the result was the best album of Hiatt's career. The musicians certainly make a difference here, generating a lean, smoky groove that's soulful and satisfying (Ry Cooder's guitar work is especially impressive, leaving no doubt of his singular gifts without ever overstepping its boundaries), but the real triumph here is Hiatt's songwriting.

This Sony release is essentially the Bruce Springsteen greatest-hits set that appeared earlier in 2009 as a Wal-Mart exclusive – setting off a mini storm in the media about whether or not the pro-union Springsteen should have any dealings at all with the non-union Wal-Mart company – with three tracks, "Long Walk Home" (from 2007's Magic) and live versions of "Because the Night" and "Fire," added to the end of the sequence. Columbia's 18-track Greatest Hits set from 1995 probably does a better job of charting through the commercial, radio-ready side of Springsteen's career, but the addition of the live tracks here strengthens this collection and makes it feel like a much broader and more rounded portrait than the original Wal-Mart issue was. The truth is, Springsteen has so many great songs that it is probably impossible to put out a single-disc greatest-hits set that would please everyone, but this one essentially does it's job – you've heard all of these songs on the radio.