What Goes Up: The Best of Blood, Sweat & Tears
AllMusic Review by William Ruhlmann
Blood, Sweat & Tears ' 11-track Greatest Hits album, released in February 1972, contained all of the group's six Top 40 singles, plus notable tracks from its two best albums, Child Is Father to the Man and Blood, Sweat & Tears. Almost 24 years later came this 32-track, 138-and-a-half-minute, double-CD expansion, much of it extraneous. Where Greatest Hits contained the single edits of songs like "You've Made Me So Very Happy" and "And When I Die," here "all titles are original album versions," as the back cover notes, which means the jazzy interludes, frequently having nothing to do with the rest of the song, remain. There are a couple of unreleased tracks, and otherwise the bloated running time was filled out by, for example, four tracks from the 1972 stiff New Blood. which didn't even feature singer David Clayton-Thomas. Legacy would have better served consumers by either expanding the original 41-minute Greatest Hits to proper CD length with a few bonus tracks, or reissuing the first two albums in a double-disc set, again with a few bonus tracks to fill up the time. This compilation did not enhance the band's reputation. And the error-filled liner notes are less than worthless.