By Thomas Jenkins
GENRE: PRAISE AND WORSHIP
LABEL: SPARROW RECORDS
RELEASE DATE: APRIL 20, 2010
RATING: 3 OUT OF 5
To me, Matt Redman has always been THE worship artist. What does that mean? well because I’d hear numerous worship songs songs in various places, either performed by other artists, or played at church services, and I’d find out that about 80% of these songs were written by Redman originally. Add to this the fact that he’s a stellar writer, who manages to keep his music both original and heartfelt, (which in this day and age is an impressive feat) and you get a musician who is well worthy of acclamation for his beautiful worship songs.
If you’ve never heard of Matt Redman (Which if you’re reading this review is probably impossible) or aren’t too familiar with his work (which is a slightly more likely) then this album is the perfect place to start. Throughout the 14 songs presented here, you’ll find almost every one of this worship leader’s classic. You’ll find the timeless “Blessed Be Your Name”, the heartfelt “Facedown”, and the church classic “Heart of Worship”. Also, if you’re a brand new youth pastor or worship leader at your church this is a great place to start if you need more songs to play for your congregation. You’ll find solid worship tunes, with something for every occasion.
However, greatest hits albums are often horrific monsters, regardless of the quality of the songs that they contain. The reason for that is that well over 50% of the time, these albums contain the best songs from the artist, and nothing else. At first that may sound perfectly alright, but when you think about the majority of the people that buy that artist’s music, it’s obvious that these people are the fans of that artist, and they most likely already have every single one of the songs on the greatest hits album. Some artists compensate for that by adding b-sides, live recordings, new songs, acoustic versions, and anything else that would reward a longtime fan for buying the songs that they already own again. Sadly, Ultimate Collection takes the former stance and offers up 14 of Redman’s greatest hits, and nothing else.
So what you see here is what you get. You get 14 stellar worship songs, but you’ve also most likely heard these songs before, and there’s no reason at all to get this collection if you’re a longtime fan of Redman (as many are). If you need worship music to play for your youth group, you can’t go wrong here, but since these favorites have been available for a long time (some of these songs have been around for a decade) there’s not a whole lot of reason to get this album, unless you want an introduction to Matt Redman. This collection gets a three out of five, because the songs are great, but the incentive to get them simply can’t match up to that. Recommended for new listeners, but nobody else.
Review copy provided courtesy of Sparrow Records
