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Rating: - Puzzling song selection makes this a CD for WY fans only
As a huge fan of The Wonder Years, I was overjoyed when this soundtrack was released, but unfortunately it barely resembles the type of soundtrack I had envisioned at the time. The whole concept of this particular album is puzzling at best, as only a smattering of these songs were ever used on the show, several of them are inferior recordings by someone other than the original artists, and not one of the songs that really and truly define this wonderful television series are to be found here. You do get the show's theme song, Joe Cocker's version of The Beatles' With a Little Help From My Friends, but the album begins to lose focus as early as the second track, an unnecessary cover of Baby I Need Your Loving by Was (Not Was). This pattern continues itself throughout the rest of the album. On the positive side of things, Buffalo Springfield's For What It's Worth (Stop, Hey What's That Sound) is a welcome track, as it provided a most memorable opening for the show's second episode; other highlights include CSNY's Teach Your Children, Van Morrison's trademark Brown Eyed Girl, and Carole King's Will You Love Me Tomorrow.

The remaining tracks beg for some sort of explanation. The Escape Club's Twentieth Century Fox not only varies considerably from the other songs collected here, it has nothing to do with The Wonder Years or its era. The Indigo Girls do a good job with Get Together, but why do we have their version instead of the original? Having Julian Lennon perform the Stones' Ruby Tuesday is sheer madness. Then there are the two Debbie Gibson tracks; I for one have always liked Debbie Gibson, and I know that she was a big Wonder Years fan (Danica McKellar actually appeared in one of her music videos), but most people enjoy her rendition of In the Still of the Night less than I do, and even I would prefer to hear the original version of the song. Gibson's second track, Come Home, is actually a song she herself wrote many, many years after the time in which the show was based.

In the end, I can only recommend this soundtrack to devoted fans of The Wonder Years, as a select few of the songs do bring back memories of the show. For the casual fan, there's little point investing in an album that contains so few original versions of classic songs.

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