Gretchen Peters - The essential Gretchen Peters

Generally an album called "The essential..." is a greatest hits package with maybe a few great tracks that weren't hits thrown in, but with this release Gretchen Peters has done it slightly differently and in her words "I wanted to choose tracks that really felt essential to who I am, the closest, absolute right-down-to-the-bone expressions of myself". It's a two disc release, and the first disc is mainly pretty much what you'd expect - a collection of hit songs, but the second disc is where it gets more interesting. On that disc you have a selection of rarities - demos, work tapes, a live track and more. That's not to say the first disc is one that you can gloss over - amongst other things it includes a previously unheard duet with Bryan Adams - "When you love someone". Almost all of the songs here are written by Gretchen Peters who is a very talented songwriter, having written for artists including Shania Twain, Bryan Adams, Etta James and many more, as well as the songs she performs herself, but there are some cover versions - John Lennon's "Love", and The Rolling Stones "Wild horses".

It's a fantastic album that includes a great mix of material old and new. The inclusion of the rarities means that fans who might not be interested by a greatest hits release will have plenty here to interest them, but those rarities are so good that they'll also be of interest to more casual fans too. I've seen plenty of releases where the rarities are only ever going to interest hardcore fans and even they'll probably only listen to them once before going back to the normal released versions of the songs, but the rarities here don't feel like filler, they stand up well against anything else on the album.

This is a superb album and one that I can't recommend highly enough.


"The essential Gretchen Peters" will be released on 5th February 2016

Track listing:

Disc One:

1. Blackbirds
2. The Aviator's song
3. The secret of life
4. If heaven
5. When all you get is a hammer
6. On a bus to St. Cloud
7. The matador
8. Sunday morning (Up and down my street)
9. Guadaloupe (with Tom Russell)
10. Hello cruel world
11. When you love someone (with Bryan Adams)
12. Five minutes
13. When you are old

Disc Two:

1. The way you moved me (Demo)
2. Ring around the moon
3. Pretty things (radio edit)
4. The cruel mother
5. Woman on the wheel (Live)
6. When you wish upon a star
7. I saw your light
8. Love
9. The chill of an early fall (Demo)
10. Independence day (acoustic version)
11. Wild horses (with Matraca Berg and Suzy Bogguss)
12. The answer (work tape)
13. Blackbirds (with Ben Glover; work tape)
14. Five minutes (work tape)