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John Denver: The Ultimate Collection, available now in the UK, debuted this week in the top 10 selling albums.

The Ultimate Collection rounds up John Denver’s finest moments. In today’s fast-paced, technology-driven, cynical world, it sounds odd to hear that something as simple as “sunshine on my shoulders” can make someone happy. “Sunshine almost always makes me high,” Denver sings. If only it were still that easy. Listening to Denver causes a sort of nostalgia for a time long lost, which now seems as wonderful and foreign as the bygone time Denver sings about on his first real hit, Take Me Home, Country Roads. “Life is old there,” he sings. “Older than the trees, younger than the mountains, blowing like the breeze.”

This 19-song collection ends with Denver’s biggest songwriting success, Leaving On A Jet Plane, which now seems inseparable from Peter, Paul & Mary. But to hear Denver sing it, it’s not a sunny, hopeful radio single. There’s a real weight in his voice, as if he genuinely doesn’t “know when I’ll be back again,” and the thought of being separated from his love is terrible and crushing. John Denver’s got a way of feeling everything that seems almost alien in the cold environs of the 21st century, and – unabashedly earnest and easy listening as it is – The Ultimate Collection is a fine reminder of a gentle voice from another time and place. [read more of this review from musicOMH]