Greatest Love Songs

Amazon.com The Sinatra who could more than convincingly offer that he had a crush on you is represented by this sweetly packaged 22-track collection. Culled mostly from the early Reprise years (with a four-cut sample of Capitol performances), Greatest Love Songs makes an airtight case for his work during the period. Often tender, occasionally enthusiastic, these selections skirt the bombast and self-parody the Chairman sometimes fell into on his own label. Popular classics like "Fly Me to the Moon" and "The Way You Look Tonight" are more than matched by keepers like the dramatically slowed Sinatra & Strings version of "Night and Day," the swinging dare of "Let's Fall in Love," and the elegiac 1961 take of "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You." Save for the thud of a studio-engineered posthumous duet with Celine Dion--an insult both to Sinatra and one of the most delicate of his signature songs, "All the Way"--this is an exemplar of the Valentine-themed album. --Rickey Wright