Brooks and Dunn, The Greatest Hits Collection (1997)

Sometimes I just need some good old fashioned country in my life, and Tuesday morning was one of those times. This is the only Brooks and Dunn album that I own, and I do sometimes find myself lamenting that it's not the later "#1s... and then some" (2009). I know this is very odd but I kind of have a little ritual with that album; for some reason I always listen to it on Air New Zealand's very good in-flight entertainment system, at the end of a long haul flight landing back in New Zealand. I don't know why, but it's kind of become a habit. So anyway, in a strange way I'm rather attached to #1s...

I always find the beginning of the Greatest Hits album a little slow in comparison with #1s, which has much more of an upbeat honky tonk vibe to it - tracks like 'Hillbilly Deluxe' and 'Honky Tonk Stomp' are just hard to beat. But the Greatest Hits album starts to hit its stride around track 4, the excellent 'Boot Scootin Boogie' (which, incidentally, also features on #1s...) and carries on with a number of other quite stellar tracks; I'm particularly fond of 'Rock My World (Little Country Girl)'. And, happily enough, once you get far enough into the album, there's a couple of of cross over tracks with #1s... including 'She's not the Cheating Kind', and 'Brand New Man'. It's Hicksville central, but it's a good listen.



In other, not entirely unrelated news, it's nearly a year since my massive Outrageous Fortune six-seasons-in-about-as-many-weeks binge. Is it really acceptable that I still kind of have a girl crush on Aurora? Can lace stockings and studded cowboy boots ever be classy? I hope so, otherwise I've unleashed a little bit of trash at work today....