Although I already owned Marianne Faithfull's Greatest Hits album that contains thirteen of these tracks, I had to acquire this one too for her exquisite interpretations of two folk classics: Tom Paxton's The Last Thing On My Mind and Tim Hardin's Reason To Believe with which Rod Stewart later had a huge hit. It was well worth it! Other sixties classics here include Monday Monday and Yesterday plus the two famous Stones songs As Tears Go By and the lugubrious Sister Morphine. The informative sleeve insert provides an interesting overview of her career, even giving the UK and US chart positions of her singles and ep's. I was surprised to learn, for example, how firmly she stood in the folk tradition in those early years, always having considered her more of a pop singer.
Besides the Paxton and Hardin numbers, my other favourites remain the yearning Come And Stay With Me, a Jackie De Shannon song which reached No. 4 in the UK in 1964, the Goffin/Mann composition Something Better, Spector/Goffin/King's Is This What I Get For Loving You and the sorrowful Go Away From My World. If I had to choose between "Greatest Hits" and this "Very Best Of", I would definitely take this one since Reason To Believe, The Last Thing On My Mind and Scarborough Fair are more beautiful than the tracks Counting, With You In Mind and Some Other Spring found on the Greatest Hits album.
