No End in Sight: The Very Best of Foreigner (2008)
Disc One
1. Feels Like the First Time
2. Long, Long Way From Home
3. Cold as Ice
4. Headknocker
5. Starrider
6. Double Vision
7. Blue Morning, Blue Day
8. Hot Blooded
9. Dirty White Boy
10.Head Games
11.Women
12.Night Life
13.Break it Up
14.Jukebox Hero
15.Urgent
16.Waiting For a Girl Like You
Disc Two
1. I Want To Know What Love Is
2. Down on Love
3. Reaction to Action
4. That Was Yesterday
5. Say You Will
6. I Don't Want To Live Without You
7. Can't Wait
8. Heart Turns To Stone
9. Lowdown and Dirty
10.I'll Fight For You
11.Under the Gun
12.Too Late
13.Say You Will (Live)
14.Starrider (Live)
15.Jukebox Hero/Whole Lotta Love (Live)
At this point, I’ve honestly lost count of how many greatest hits packages Foreigner has released. By the time we got to No End in Sight (the title....how ironic), it felt like every couple of years there was a new version cropping up—often with a shuffled track list, slightly updated artwork, and the faint hope that maybe, just maybe, fans wouldn’t notice it was more or less the same collection they already bought. At least twice.
But when your current strategy revolves around playing the casino and amphitheater circuit—venues that hold maybe a third of what they did in their heyday—it’s a lot cheaper to repackage the old hits than to fund a full album of new material that will, let’s face it, fly under the radar of casual fans. It’s hard to blame them. If someone’s standing at a gas station checkout and sees a CD with “Foreigner” across the front, they’re only buying it if the words Hot Blooded or Urgent are on the back. If not? It’s going back on the spindle.
All of that said, this package actually does a pretty good job. In fact, it’s probably the best compilation they’ve put together. While it bears more than a passing resemblance to 2000’s Jukebox Heroes: The Foreigner Anthology, this time around, the focus is tighter. Gone are the solo efforts and stray Spooky Tooth tracks that padded out the last one. What’s left is just Foreigner—and only Foreigner—which is what most fans want anyway.
The track list covers all the essentials, from Feels Like the First Time to I Want to Know What Love Is, and even includes a new track, Too Late, which would later appear on the band’s Can’t Slow Down album from 2009. It’s a respectable addition—maybe not a classic, but certainly more solid than most new songs tacked onto greatest hits albums.
Also included are three live cuts: Say You Will, Starrider, and a 13-minute Jukebox Hero blended with Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love. It’s a neat trick, and actually a highlight of the disc—especially if you didn’t catch it on their Alive and Rockin’ live album. Say You Will is performed acoustically in front of a small audience—tasteful, but one still wishes for a straight live version that sounds like the original. And Starrider, for reasons only the band can explain, keeps getting trotted out on every release, likely because it gives Mick Jones a moment to shine and—on this version—a moment to be publicly hailed by singer Kelly Hansen as “the leader and creative genius of this band.”
Ego massage, disc 2, track 14.
If you’re looking for the definitive Foreigner compilation, this is probably it. It might not dig as deep as Jukebox Heroes, but it’s more cohesive, better curated, and doesn’t try to be anything other than what it is: a tight, no-nonsense overview of one of arena rock’s biggest names. If you’re on a budget or just want one Foreigner album on the shelf, this one gets the job done. No extras required.
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