Reviewed by Tony Cummings

As any Christian music buff will tell you, Word Records, originally based in Waco, Texas but for many years an iconic Nashville company, has been there as Christian music has grown from a tiny niche market releasing music by choirs and sacred soloists to become the multi-million dollar entity we know today. With Word currently celebrating its 60th anniversary the company had a great chance to present its history to Joe Public. Unfortunately, this three disc compilation fails miserably to do the task. Judging from the number of modern tracks offered here (particularly on Disc 3, subtitled 'Today's Hits'), the execs who put this set together had a crisis of confidence about the whole endeavour and tried to make the album serve an additional purpose as a sampler for Word's current roster. That particular disc is okay as far as it goes if you are looking for a reminder of how good Group 1 Crew, Stellar Kart and Chris August are while the new signings like Dara Maclean, Patrick Ryan Clark and For King & Country show promise too. Disc 1 ('The Early Years') has in fact only one really early track, Jarrell McCracken's "The Game Of Life" which started the whole Word company off back in 1952 with most of the other stuff coming from the '70s and '80s. There are one or two gems, like 2nd Chapter Of Acts' "Easter Song" and the Imperials' "Praise The Lord", but they are few and far between. Disc 2 ('Yesterday's Favorites') has some good tracks from Nicole C Mullen, Crystal Lewis, Petra, Fernando Ortega and Rachael Lampa but with no stylistic continuity and no attempt at any kind of chronological order this is a mess of a compilation which fails both as musical history and as albums which can be enjoyed in their entirety.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

Interested in reviewing music? Find out more here.