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The story of Cindy Morgan's entry into Contemporary Christian Music reads as much like a classic fairy tale as it does an actual historical account. Growing up in a family of eight in rural East Tennessee, Morgan taught herself to play piano by the age of 11. While still a teenager, she entered and won a national Country Music competition at the Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. After the competition, Morgan began singing in the live stage shows at Dollywood and on sound-alike demos at a recording studio in Knoxville. The exposure from these jobs led to her signing with Word Records and releasing her debut, Real Life, in 1992. The album was hugely successful, generating three Number One singles and two more that reached the Top Five. On the strength of the release, Morgan was nominated for five Dove Awards in 1993, including New Artist of the Year, which she won. Over the course of the next seven years, she garnered eight more Top Ten hits, including five chart toppers, and four more Doves for work done on her solo efforts and outside projects. The new release, The Best So Far, features twelve hit singles from Cindy Morgan's five studio albums and two new songs recorded specifically for the greatest hits package. While the album certainly serves as a testament to her formidable hit-making capacity, it is equally valuable as a chronicle of her shifting musical tastes and expanding artistic depth. The first two albums, Real Life and 1993's Reason to Live, were consistently energetic, R&B-tinged efforts that mirrored the beat-heavy dance-pop of artist like Paula Abdul and Gloria Estefan. But, while her songs from Real Life, including "It's Gonna Be Heaven" and the mesmerizing, semi-ambient "Let It Be Love," were mostly evangelistic anthems directed at the culture at large, a good portion of Reason to Live delved into more personal, introspective territory, with equally rousing results. Over the course of her next three albums, Morgan abandoned the urban stylings of her first two releases for a more eclectic set of musical styles. Under the Waterfall was a magnificently subdued combination of soft rock and adult contemporary music while Listen tagged its songs with a driving, hard rock stamp. And where "I Know You" and "Sweet Days of Grace" (Sun shines/ And brings a new light/ Where we can recline/ In the sweet days) imbued Under the Waterfall with a quiet and delicate assurance, songs like Listen's title track (Open up your ears/ And open up your heart/ And listen) gave that album a sentiment that was far more urgent and bold. By the Listen album, Morgan was writing more or less all of her own lyrics and 1998's The Loving Kind, while somewhat less musically consistent than its predecessors, showed that Morgan was still willing to experiment lyrically. The release, a concept album chronicling of Christ's last week on earth, contained several fine songs including the beautiful proto-worship ballad "Praise the King" and the hymnlike "Take My Life," which was easily as stirring as it is grand. Despite its inarguably strong line-up, the new release falls just short of being flawless. A fair number of noteworthy songs such as "Love Can Break Your Fall" from the debut, Listen's "The Master's Hand" and the title track from "The Loving Kind," all Top Twenty singles, were left off of the collection. Likewise, the album would have been a bit more representative of Morgan's thus far expansive career had it included her contributions to outside projects such as the Young Messiah and My Utmost for His Highest concert series or Michael W. Smith's Exodus worship project. And the new songs, "Tell Me That You Love Me" and the Gospel-flavored remake of England Dan & John Ford Coley's "Light of the Word," while certainly pleasant enough, seem decidedly superfluous in light of their catchier, more memorable counterparts that have categorized the bulk of Morgan's work up to this point. Nonetheless, The Best So Far does a first-rate job of gathering nearly all of Morgan's biggest hits, from what is indeed a plenteous supply, and assembling them into an impressive anthology which is every bit as imposing as the artist whose daunting vocal ability and abundant songwriting talent produced them. Bert Gangl 4/14/00
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