Beggin' - The Ultimate Collection

Album Review

It's hardly appropriate to subtitle this set of tracks from Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons "the ultimate collection," for while it does feature some genuine classic hits like "Walk Like a Man" and "Big Girls Don't Cry," the songs that it doesn't feature, like "Sherry," "Dawn,""Candy Girl," "Rag Doll" and the group's conceptual masterpiece, "Silence Is Golden," would actually make for a much better set. There doesn't seem to have been a lot of thought or vision behind sticking these 14 cuts together. At their best in the early 1960s the Four Seasons, thanks in no small part to the songwriting and production team of Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio, plus, of course, Frankie Valli's one of a kind soaring lead vocals, were a sort of brilliant bridge between the previous era's doo wop groups, the teen idol phenomenon that emerged in the very late '50s, and the coming pop sophistication of groups like the Beatles and the Beach Boys. Little of that brilliance is on display here, and the ultimate collection of the Four Seasons this most definitely isn't.