True, most of the songs on this are from ROCKY IV, but no complaints here. The fourth movie had without a doubt the best songs out of all the movies, anyway. Survivor opens the CD with "Eye of the Tiger" (an Oscar nominee, BTW), and "Burning Heart." Both are superb songs, the former being one of my favorites of all time. The third track by James Brown, "Living in America, " while not a bad song, just seems very out of place, and I always end up skipping it. Then comes Robert Tepper’s terrific "No Easy Way Out, " but that track becomes all but obsolete when placed next to "Hearts on Fire" by John Cafferty. Wow, what a great, great song! The final song on the disc is the ulticlassic "Gonna Fly Now" from the very first Rocky movie. I really wish they had bothered to put Bill Conti’s original on here instead of this re-recording, but both this and the instrumental version closing out the album are quite good, and maintain the spirit of Bill Conti’s musical score. Between those are two instrumental numbers from ROCKY IV composed by Vince DiCola. It took a while for me to warm up to these two tracks, but now I love ’em.
My only complaint about the whole CD is that they didn’t include any of Bill Conti’s music for any of the four-out-of-five films he scored. His music provided such an important part of the films’ spirit, it’s a shame the makers of this CD only offered two different redone versions of the same song. That complaint aside, this is an awesome CD, and makes the perfect buy for anyone trying to save money by not buying more than one Rocky CD. If you’re willing to spend the extra money, however, then I’d definitely go with buying the soundtracks for ROCKY and ROCKY IV. You get the same material presented here, plus much more, but again for twice as much. You decide. Either way, you get the goods.