In 1999, Arista released an 18-track
Air Supply anthology called
Definitive Collection. Four years later, Arista/BMG Heritage released an 18-track
Air Supply anthology called
Ultimate Air Supply. What is the difference between the two collections? Five tracks (plus new liner notes, including track-by-track recollections by Graham Russell and
Russell Hitchcock). The original Australian version of "Lost in Love" is lost from
Definitive Collection, but this gains their last American charting single, "The Power of Love (You Are My Lady)," later popularized by
Celine Dion. This is a marginal difference, and certainly not enough for anybody who already owned
Definitive Collection to jettison it for this, but it does mean that it gets the slight edge for anybody looking for a thorough
Air Supply collection (although, truth be told, most listeners will likely be happy with a shorter collection since the songs that surround the big hits -- which are "Lost in Love," "All Out of Love," "Every Woman in the World," "The One That You Love," "Here I Am," "Even the Nights Are Better," and the
Jim Steinman-penned "Making Love Out of Nothing at All" -- tend to be a little too samey in their adult contemporary smoothness, and dilute the impact of those big hits). ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine