Chris Gaines. Chris Gaines' Greatest Hits. Capitol 20051. 3322 West End Ave., Nashville, TN 37203.

For a man who has sold as many records as Chris Gaines, a greatest hits collection is long overdue. As most know, the Australian-born Gaines burst upon the pop scene in 1986 as the singer/songwriter for Crush, with their Beatles sound-alike hit "My Love Tells Me So" (included as the final cut of this collection). As upbeat and pop as this song still sounds, it is evident from this distance that, even though Gaines was to evolve into an important musical figure, much of his early work was derivative--too close for artistic comfort, some might say--to his 60s musical heroes.

After touring with the Coward Brothers and, later, the Shaggs, Gaines teamed up briefly with Dorothy Wiggins, that group's talented lead singer and songwriter, who was instrumental in helping Gaines work through the death of fellow Crush member and best pal Tommy Levitz in a late-1986 plane crash. Gaines survived to write "Maybe," an ode to Tommy, and one of the biggest hits from his Grammy winning album, Straight Jacket (recently reprised by Alison Krauss on her pop-oriented 1999 album Forget About It). Unfortunately, the version of "Maybe" included in this collection is the over-produced Beatlesque (again!) pop hit and not the live acoustic version, with those unforgettable harmonies from the Shaggs, that has circulated as a bootleg for many years. Too bad Capitol Records couldn't have been more daring and creative--a chance to add to the historical record has been lost!

As everyone knows, at the height of his popularity in the 1990s (and perhaps as a result of head injuries suffered in his 1992 auto accident), Gaines--seemingly miffed because he could not get country radio to play his pop hit "Main Street" (which, admittedly, was at least as country sounding as many of Alabama's songs)--invented a fictitious country "singer" whom he named "Garth Brooks," and recorded a whole "double live" album masquerading as this person. With his characteristic sense of humor, Gaines created a complete history for this "country singer," asserting that Brooks had gotten a "public relations degree" from Oklahoma State University (a sly swipe at "new country," if there ever was one). Brooks, according to Gaines, was a balding, slightly stout man who played live shows with KISS-like pyrotechnic stage effects, wrote songs that championed, among other topics, gay rights and women's causes, and coming from the country field, took control over his own record company and wound up selling more songs than Frank Sinatra, Elvis or the Beatles! Such a character is clearly absurd--in real life, artists don't "take over" their record countries, country radio wouldn't play these types of songs and the country audience would never embrace a singer with such "uncountry" characteristics. Even though Brooks was clearly meant as an alter-ego spoof, Gaines would have done better to stick to the pop field where he does know what he is doing, and not ventured into this pseudo-Nashville territory where his attempts to sound country just don't ring true. Happily, none of the songs on Gaines's Garth Brooks Live album are included on this greates hits collection--and, rightly so, as the far-fetched "Garth Brooks" project has been Gaines's one and only artistic flop, to date.

This collection does contain perhaps Gaines's greatest piece of music, the sensitive "It Don't Matter to the Sun," and his Prince/Babyface inspired late 90s hits, such as "Driftin' Away" and "Snow in July." He also includes a brand new stunner "Lost In You" that should give the Backstreet Boys pause as it tears up the charts.

For this reviewer, though, no Chris Gaines collection would be complete without the singer's classic tribute to Eddie and the Cruisers, perhaps one of the greatest rock bands of all time, "Once More, From the Bridge." One cannot hear Chris sing that classic refrain:

The water's black but I am white,
I'm sinking, sinking fast