Clint Black--whose Greatest Hits Vol 2 are collected here--eventually lost the head-to-head race with Garth Brooks to be the new-country king of the 1990s, and he gradually descended from the platinum-studded, million-selling mountain top into the valley of gold records and relative obscurity. But this impressive 16-song collection of hits and near-misses, culled from Black's half-dozen studio albums and padded with four new songs, makes you wonder if the world wouldn't have been better off if Black had won that race. These tracks (all of them written or co-written by Black and many also produced by him) remind us that in the decade and a half or so since he first appeared, he's been a far more adventurous songwriter and stylist than Brooks has ever been. That said, there's a fair amount of chaff mixed with the wheat here. Many of the newer songs--such as "When I Said I Do" (a duet with his wife, actress Lisa Hartman), "Little Pearl" (Black's sentimental ode to his new baby daughter) and the cliché-ridden "Money or Love"--tend to drown in either mawkish sentimentality or Black's irritating lyrical verbosity. But masterful tracks such as "Been There" (a fine duet with Steve Wariner), the swingy "One More Payment", the soulful "(The Lights are On) Nobody's Home" and an impressive blues version of "Put Yourself in My Shoes" (featuring a full horn arrangement) remind us how very good Black can be when he's firing on all cylinders. --Bob Allen