Ultimate Collection (Liza Minnelli album)
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| Ultimate Collection | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Compilation album by | ||||
| Released | November 6, 2001 | |||
| Recorded | 1964–1989 | |||
| Genre | Traditional | |||
| Label | Hip-O | |||
| Liza Minnelli chronology | ||||
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Ultimate Collection is a compilation album by American singer and actress Liza Minnelli, released in 2001 by Hip-O Records.[1] The collection spans recordings from different stages of Minnelli's career, beginning with songs from her 1964 debut at age 18 and extending to tracks recorded approximately twenty-five years later. During this period, her songs encompassed genres such as rock, pop, country, dance, and synth-pop.
Overall, critics considered Ultimate Collection a broad, career-spanning compilation, noting its limitations due to omissions and its stronger appeal to a casual audience.
The album spans nearly the entirety of Liza Minnelli's recording career, it opens with the song "Try to Remember" produced by Simon Rady (from the 1964 album Liza! Liza!), and closes with "Losing My Mind" (from the 1989 album Results), produced by the Pet Shop Boys. The track list includes songs that became career hits, such as "Theme from New York, New York", "Say Liza" (from Liza with a Z, 1972), "Maybe This Time", and "Cabaret" (from the 1972 album Live at the Olympia in Paris), as well as others from her albums that incorporate influences of rock, pop, country, dance, and synth-pop.[2][3]
The collection is accompanied by a 16-page booklet featuring an essay written by Minnelli's historian (and that of her mother, actress and singer Judy Garland), Scott Schechter, along with several photographs.[2]
Critical reception
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |    [4] |
| Deseret News | [5] |
| The News-Press | [6] |
Jose F. Promis of AllMusic observed that creating a single-disc Ultimate Collection for Liza Minnelli is "misleading at best" due to "way too many omissions", though "this collection will most likely please the casual and the curious".[4] Chris Hicks of Deseret News wrote that the compilation is "more of a career overview", while noting that "the early songs are best" before she entered a phase in which she "began to overproduce and 'belt' everything".[5] Mark Marymont of The News Press wrote that this "21-song set draws from six of the labels she's recorded for and gives a fan a wide-ranging look at the musical side of her career".[6]
Dave Tianen of Milwaukee Journal Sentinel included the album in his list of the best greatest hits albums to give as Christmas gifts, and wrote that "among its 21 tracks this should cover it for the casual fan".[7] Rex Reed of The New York Observer wrote that the compilation "gives the superstar's cult 21 reasons to rejoice in a first-ever career overview".[8]
