The Story So Far: The Very Best of Rod Stewart

The Story So Far: The Very Best of Rod Stewart
Greatest hits album by
Released12 November 2001
Recorded1969–2000
GenreRock
Length155:11
LabelFMR
Warner Bros.
ProducerRod Stewart, Patrick Leonard, Trevor Horn, Bernard Edwards, Michael Omartian, Tom Dowd, Andy Taylor
Rod Stewart chronology
Human
(2001)
The Story So Far: The Very Best of Rod Stewart
(2001)
It Had to Be You: The Great American Songbook
(2002)
The Voice: The Very Best of Rod Stewart
Encore: The Very Best of Rod Stewart, Vol. 2
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic
AllMusic

The Story So Far: The Very Best of Rod Stewart is a career-retrospective compilation album by Rod Stewart, released in 2001. The album summarises his solo work beginning with material from his 1971 breakthrough album Every Picture Tells a Story until his 2001 album Human. For contractual reasons, only two songs from his Mercury Records tenure ("Maggie May" and "You Wear It Well") were included (a third song from the Mercury era, "Reason to Believe", was included in a live acoustic version from the Warner Bros. album Unplugged...and Seated). The rest of the material is from different albums released under Warner Bros. Records.

The compilation was particularly notable for dividing the songs between rock and pop tunes on the first disc (A Night Out) and love songs on the second disc (A Night In). Also, even though most of the songs included on the album enjoyed big success (29 out of the 34 songs originally reached the Top 10 in the United Kingdom and/or the United States), many hit singles were missed-out, including US Top 10 hits as "Passion", "Infatuation", "Handbags and Gladrags" and "My Heart Can't Tell You No".

In the United States the album was released separately as The Voice: The Very Best of Rod Stewart and Encore: The Very Best of Rod Stewart Vol. 2, though there are some differences in the content. Warner Bros. Records released The Story So Far on 12 November 2001 and the next day, The Voice was released. On 26 August 2003, Encore was released.