Eagles concert tickets may be overpriced, but this best-of — thirty-three songs on two discs, plus a DVD — is a bargain. Superseding two established phenomena — Greatest Hits (at 28 million copies sold, music's all-time best seller) and Greatest Hits Volume 2 (11 million sold) — The Very Best incorporates every song from both discs and adds thirteen more, arraying them in chronological order. The remastered sound is startlingly crisp, and the hefty booklet includes detailed commentary from band principals Don Henley and Glenn Frey. It's a dream package that unerringly documents Henley and Frey's Eagle-eyed view of the 1970s, from earthly paradise to fast-lane trap. Likewise, the music progresses from soaring country rock to Seventies rock that is, by turns, hard and brooding. One programming quibble: "Hotel California" would have been better positioned leading off the second disc than ending the first.

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.