John Hiatt - Collected (2012)

John Hiatt is one of those singer and songwriter types whose songs have worked best, at least commercially, in the hands of others (Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, Iggy Pop, Three Dog Night, the Neville Brothers, and many more have covered Hiatt songs and gone places with them), but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a voice. He does, and while he sings fine enough, his real voice is in the songs themselves, which are frequently brilliant. He may not be riding the charts with any of his own versions, but he's built a steady body of work over some 20 studio albums. This three-disc set features tracks from throughout that career, beginning with early material, then running through the 1980s and 1990s, and out into the new century. A good songwriter knows that a good song will have a life of its own -- Hiatt has written an awful lot of those. This set offers 57 of them.