With his Sam Cooke phrasing and rough as sandpaper voice, Rod Stewart has been both brilliant ("Maggie May") and shameless ("Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?") during his four-decade career, and if he now seems well past his sell-by date, there's no denying that his distinctive voice is a pop culture wonder. This uneven best-of collection has both of the hits listed above as well as late-period gems like Stewart's version of Tom Waits' magnificent "Downtown Train" (Stewart's take doesn't even come close to Waits' original, however), but it lacks key early tracks like the epic "Every Picture Tells a Story" and Stewart's wise cover of Tim Hardin's "Reason to Believe," and doesn't go anywhere near Stewart's wonderful work with the Faces or Jeff Beck. What's here only tells part of the story, and not necessarily the best part of that story. This will do for casual fans, perhaps, but picking up Stewart's Every Picture Tells a Story album from 1971 makes a whole lot more sense. It only went downhill from there. ~ Steve Leggett, All Music Guide