{"id":830591,"date":"2026-08-30T06:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T06:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/830591\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T06:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T06:50:09","slug":"the-eagles-their-greatest-hits-1971-1975-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/830591\/","title":{"rendered":"The Eagles: Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

This helps explain the potency of Their Greatest Hits, too. Heard beginning to end, the first four Eagles albums are suffer-fests, capturing the band as they learn not only to write but also to tell bad from good. They released four albums, or 40 songs, in their first three years, and the great majority of them simply fill space. \u201cMost of Us Are Sad<\/a>,\u201d \u201cEarly Bird<\/a>,\u201d \u201cMy Man<\/a>,\u201d \u201cAfter the Thrill Is Gone<\/a>\u201d: Henley and Frey loved to talk about their quality control, how hard they worked to find le mot juste, but I\u2019ve never heard those records as much more than real-time chronicles of success and failure, the sound of a band still figuring out how to not suck.<\/p>\n

Henley hated the idea of a greatest hits collection, because he claimed it was \u201cthe forced and hideous marriage of art and commerce,\u201d ostensibly back when he claimed to care about that first part. He failed to understand, though, that Their Greatest Hits stripped away the misfires of the Eagles\u2019 actual albums, leaving only 10 of the best songs they would ever write, that have ever been written in the realm of folk-rock. Their Greatest Hits is the only no-skips set in the catalog of a band that sometimes seemed to specialize in the skips. Put another way, I will always own a copy of Their Greatest Hits; I would not take copies of the first four Eagles albums from a free bin, Desperado debatably excepted.<\/p>\n

In March 2026, writing about the golden anniversary of Their Greatest Hits, the BBC<\/a> asked British music journalist Peter Doggett why these 10 songs sold so well. He said, \u201cIt\u2019s very melodic, very professional and doesn\u2019t actually mean anything.\u201d This is a well-earned insult for a band who once insisted<\/a> that \u201cOn the Border<\/a>\u201d\u2014a song about being annoyed at a traffic cop\u2014was some profound political statement.<\/p>\n

Still, these are not songs about nothing. Nine of the 10 tracks on Their Greatest Hits\u2014with the lone exception of \u201cWitchy Woman,\u201d Henley\u2019s bout of strong-woman paranoia\u2014are about wanting something you do not have and the anguish you can endure to get it. \u201cTake It Easy\u201d is often taken at face value. Frey, though, is a worried man here, singing for his salvation, trying to find that one lover who will fix him. Listen for Leadon\u2019s simple but brilliant banjo line, which begins as he takes his guitar solo and does not disappear until the track is done; it\u2019s the sound of anxiety and self-doubt, of trying to loosen your load, not of simple contentment. The title and chorus of \u201cPeaceful Easy Feeling\u201d are, likewise, feints; this lust sure feels nice, but Frey understands that it will likely end in another rejection. That\u2019s OK, because he\u2019s already too low to be let down again.<\/p>\n

Then there are the affair-and-breakup songs, tunes where someone is searching for something better, like young musicians heading west to get famous. \u201cLyin\u2019 Eyes\u201d sounds dreamy but reads cruelly, chronicling a kept woman who prowls each night to the \u201ccheating side of town\u201d only to come back home and deplore the person she reckons she must have always been. No one in this love triangle is happy or satisfied. The same goes for \u201cTequila Sunrise,\u201d a brutal song about betrayal and trying to fill your own permanent emotional void no matter who you hurt in the process. \u201cDealin\u2019 friends,\u201d as Frey sings, may feel awful, but does it really matter when the upshot feels better?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This helps explain the potency of Their Greatest Hits, too. Heard beginning to end, the first four Eagles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":830592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216,148628],"class_list":["post-830591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-sunday-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=830591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/830592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}