John Denver – John Denver's Greatest Hits

Greatest hits collection on vinyl LP

The collection includes material from John Denver's earlier days as a songwriter (going back to 1965 on "For Bobbie") to his later hit "Rocky Mountain High." Indeed many of these tracks were not hits per se, but as Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote for AllMusic, "these were (the) songs that defined him."

Moreover, Greatest Hits is important historically because it contains new, revisionist recordings of several songs. Notable new versions include "Leaving on a Jet Plane," "Starwood in Aspen," "Follow Me," "Rhymes and Reasons," "The Eagle and the Hawk," "Sunshine On My Shoulders" and "Poems, Prayers, and Promises."

Denver explained this himself in the liner notes by saying that he had picked the numbers most requested in his concerts, but that "I felt that some of these songs had grown a bit, that I am singing better than I was four or five years ago, and that I would like to treat some of the songs a little differently than I had in the original recordings."

After its release these versions were used for airplay despite differing in subtle but important ways from the original versions; generally, they were more polished, featured a more mature-sounding Denver, included strings, and were extended somewhat.

Greatest Hits climbed by the following spring to the top of the Billboard 200 pop albums chart, went platinum, and was one of the first albums world-wide to sell more than 10 million copies.