Steven Curtis Chapman

Greatest Hits

A great track record
Chapman covers a decade's worth of terrific songs

Review by Brian Mansfield

Steven Curtis Chapman couldn't have chosen a better opening track for his Greatest Hits album than "Not Home Yet." One of the two new tunes from this career overview, "Not Home Yet" sets the tone for the collection by essentially defining Chapman's music and faith to this point as a work-in-progress and not a place for resting on laurels.

And Chapman has plenty of laurels. "Not Home Yet" is written from the perspective of "one who's seen the view and dreamt of staying on mountains high," and it's pretty obvious that character is Chapman himself. Since arriving on the Christian music scene a decade ago with the album First Hand, Chapman has won 32 Dove Awards -- 12 of them in 1993 and 1995 when he won six each year. He's got four gold albums (one of those, Heaven in the Real World, has gone platinum as well, selling more than a million copies). He's seen his songs recorded by Billy Dean, Charlie Daniels, Glen Campbell, and Sandi Patty, to name only the most prominent.

Chapman has 26 chart-topping hits -- so many that he couldn't have put them all on two discs the length of Greatest Hits. Though the songs on this album aren't necessarily his biggest, they are his best -- songs like the anthemic "For the Sake of the Call," the reflective "More to this Life," the gentle "His Eyes," and the rocking "Heaven in the Real World."

Greatest Hits contains 14 recordings. Two of them ("Not Home Yet" and "I Am Found in You") are new songs; two others ("Lord of the Dance" and "The Walk") are new recordings, made live in London's Abbey Studios, that coincide with the release of Chapman's new longform video, The Walk. The collection contains songs from seven of Chapman's nine previous albums. The songs range from the praise tunes of his early years ("Hiding Place," "His Strength Is Perfect") to newer tunes like "The Great Adventure" and "That's Paradise," which fuse worshipful intent with fresh, vibrant metaphors.

Though it's hard to believe now, some of these tunes didn't reach the top of the charts upon their release. "Hiding Place" has been used so frequently in Sunday congregational settings that it may be better known via that setting than through Chapman's original 1987 recording. "His Strength Is Perfect," from Real Life Conversations, made it only to Number Five. And "That's Paradise," which appeared originally on 1992's Heaven in the Real World, broke a string of 10 consecutive chart-toppers.

The Walk offers
endearing moments with
family and seven music
videos from nine albums.

In a genre where a devotion to musical trends makes many songs sound dated the minute they fall off play lists, Chapman's songs -- even the earliest ones like "Hiding Place" and "His Eyes" -- have held up remarkably well. As good as those songs are, the newer tunes show just how much he's grown as a singer, a songwriter, and performer.

Greatest hits albums often don't offer much value for the devoted fans who've probably already bought each of an artist's albums and get stuck paying full-CD price for one or two new tunes. Chapman's collection offers more than most: "Not Home Yet" and "I Am Found in You" rank with the singer's best songs, and the stripped-down versions of "Lord of the Dance" and "The Walk" certainly won't disappoint people who have grown to love the originals.

Ten years down the road, Steven Curtis Chapman has turned out to be one of the most successful artists contemporary Christian music has produced. One of the primary reasons he's found such acclaim is that he takes both his faith and his music very seriously. When he learned that three teens had been killed in the Paducah, Kentucky high school he attended, Chapman immediately went to minister to students and attend memorial services. He sang "Not Home Yet" at one of the slain girls' funeral services and plans to host a memorial concert in Paducah in January. He may not be home yet, but he's certainly the kind of person one would like to find as a traveling companion.

Brian Mansfield is a music reviewer for Christian publications in Nashville, TN.


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