Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Is this worth a purchase for the longtime fan? I pretty much had everything already, including most of the versions here. Once the tracklisting became available I went to my Amazon cloud, assembled a playlist with every track from this collection in sequence but for those which would only become legitimately available upon release. So the question became, "What's in the package?" I preordered the three CD version (why would you settle for anything less?). Upon its delivery on the day of release I popped open the box to find out. Amazon's images show what the box set looks like when its gatefold is fully extended. Two CDs are contained in one of those "slimline" twofer CD jewel cases, a third disk is in a second CD jewel case. The two CD jewel cases slide out from the two sides of the gatefold box; the matte finish cardboard case holds them snugly so they can be retrieved easily but without the likelihood of a case falling out if you hold the box vertically. Each of the two jewel cases contains a sixteen page booklet. The artwork and photography are beautiful as we've come to expect from any of Mr. Bowie's packages; roughly one page-sized photo for each of his decades. With a set like this spanning a full fifty years in the arts there's really no need to add pages to accommodate the musings of some itinerant journalist from this music rag or that. So if you find this music compelling it will be because of the testimony of your own ears and taste rather than liner notes containing the advocacy of some scribe-for-hire. The two booklets of sixteen pages each contain a tracklisting, songwriting credits, a namecheck for the album from which each track was drawn, and the legalese that goes with each track entry. Credits for musicians are listed only for the one new track, "Sue", which leads off the box set. So as packaging goes it's elegant and minimalist. Not in the bad sense; this attractive set bears no resemblance to the cheap catalog issues MCA put out in the 80s, for instance. But if you opt for the digital download instead, you're basically only missing out on artwork and a little box that will look nice on the shelf. Taking a contrarian approach, Bowie emphasizes his newest work first by sequencing the collection in reverse chronological order. This avoids the statement implied by so many anthologies which suggest that an artist had a span of time in the public eye followed by a slow decline with less interesting music. The opener, Bowie's latest track, is new ground for him; he's been listening to some timeless jazz, the sound of which reflects the noir sensibility of the song's video. For the past twenty years Bowie's music has gradually gotten gloomier; this new song may be the deepest point in that emotional valley. (Is this married man syndrome, or Bowie keeping pace with a particular constituency, or just a recorded journal of where he's at these days?) That's a sharp contrast to the joyful raveup which marks the start of Bowie's career (and the end of this box set), "Liza Jane". The aesthetic decision by the set's curator to introduce the casual listener to a half dozen or so songs from Bowie's early years distinguishes this 3CD version of "Nothing Has Changed" from any previous Bowie collections or box sets. A thumbnail description of this collection might be: a concise listing of hits and singles, mostly in their edited single versions, documenting the full span of Bowie's career to date. As an ardent Bowie fan I could complain about single edits vs. album cuts, the Berlin years covered in three singles instead of five or six, this or that song being excluded, but if the goal of the set was to present a tight list of just Bowie singles, this is it. The only legendary song that is definitely missing in action is "Suffragette City". I could assemble a second box set of this size comprised of songs not included here, but for the casual hitseeker who wants the public document of Bowie's career, here it is. It's a good place to start. Update after uploading the CD version to my Amazon cloud: "Space Oddity" is listed as "UK Single Edit" but it looks to be the full version of the song, running 5:14. "Diamond Dogs" fades out before the ending, trimming off ~15 seconds. Looks like this is the case with the digital download as well. "I'm Afraid of Americans (V1)[Clean Edit]" looks to be the same as [Radio Edit] on the "Best of Bowie" collection.