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.

“The Pretender”

This song wasn't part of the planned track listing for 2007's Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, and was put together in a day. "It happened after we recorded a lot of stuff," said Dave Grohl. Yet it ended up as the album opener and the lead single. Grohl called it "a stomping Foo Fighters uptempo song with a little bit of Chuck Berry in it." The singer hinted at the lyrics' political overtones: "Everyone's been f---ed over before and I think a lot of people feel f---ed over right now and they're not getting what they were promised."