Best of Mark Schultz

Mark Schultz sums up his first decade as a CCM artist with this 17-track compilation, which includes re-recordings of some of his best-known songs and the original versions of others. His adult contemporary chart entry "He's My Son" is presented in its hit rendition, as are the Christian chart singles "He Is" and "Love Has Come." (Missing, perhaps understandably, is "`Til I See You Again," an AC chart entry on which Schultz served as vocalist for keyboard player Jim Brickman.) Schultz's musical approach is highly produced pop/rock, in which the chorus can arrive like a sledgehammer after a delicate opening, then get repeated over and over. Above the music, he sings in a high, clear tenor that mostly works for the material, although, when he occasionally gets uptempo, notably on the suitably frantic and somewhat comic number "Running Just to Catch Myself," he can suggest Weird Al Yankovic. He isn't trying to be that funny on the song, and most of the time he's deadly serious. Titles like "I Am," "I Am the Way," and "He Is" suggest the tone of Schultz's praise songs, and he also has a heavy-handed weakness for unabashed, tear-jerking sentimentality, notably on such soap-operas-in-song as "Letters from War," "What It Means to Be Loved," and "Walking Her Home." But then, one man's sentimental is another man's heartbreaking, and Schultz's fans probably will be only too happy to listen and cry along all over again. ~ William Ruhlmann