Unlike many previous
Carole King
collections,
Sony
/
Legacy
's 2010 set
The Essential Carole King
doesn't concentrate solely on her hits as a performer: it also has a second disc of songs she wrote for other artists, the songs that established her reputation as one of the great songwriters of her time. Despite the broad scope of
Essential
, it's inevitable that some classics are missing -- naturally more on the second Songwriter disc, which offers merely a sampling of the many great songs she penned, whereas all her big hits (
"I Feel the Earth Move,"
"So Far Away,"
"It's Too Late,"
"You've Got a Friend,"
"Jazzman"
) save the inexplicably missing
"Smackwater Jack"
are on the first -- but this does contain the lion's share of her major songs as both a singer and songwriter, making it the best overview of her work released to date. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine