On their wide musical journeys in the '80s, the Chieftains decided to collaborate with Van Morrison, who had an artistic peak at the end of the decade. The result was a highlight in both of their '80s productions: the traditional Irish Heartbeat, with Morrison on lead vocals and a guest appearance from the Mary Black. Morrisonand Moloney's production puts the vocals up front with a sparse background, sometimes with a backdrop of intertwining strings and flutes, the same way Morrison would later use the Chieftains on his Hymns to the Silence. The arrangement and the artist's engaged singing leads to a brilliant result, and these Irish classics are made very accessible without being transformed into pop songs…

Although Van Morrison's first solo album is remembered for containing the immortal pop hit "Brown Eyed Girl," Blowin' Your Mind! is actually a dry run for his masterpiece, Astral Weeks. Songs like "Who Drove the Red Sports Car" look to that song cycle, even as "Midnight Special" nods to Morrison's R&B past. But it's the agonizing "T.B. Sheets" - all nine-plus minutes of it - that dominates this record and belies its trendy title and pop association. "T.B. Sheets" takes the blues and reinvents it as noble tragedy and humiliating mortality. It's where Van Morrison emerges as an artist.

Magic Time is one of those rare, intermittent Van Morrison records that consciously offers a bird's eye view of everywhere he's been musically and weaves it all together into a heady brew. The last one was The Healing Game in 1997. He's made fine records since (Down the Road, Back on Top), but they've been focused on whatever Muse was pulling his coattails at the time. Magic Time is restless and freewheeling. Lyrically, it's alternately bittersweet, celebratory, and ornery. Like all of his records, notions of the past haunt these songs like familiar specters making sure they are not forgotten. Here, Celtic soul, gritty blues, fingerpopping swing, R&B, and classic pop all jockey for dominance over ten originals and three covers…

Van Morrison - Astral Weeks (1968). Astral Weeks is generally considered one of the best albums in pop music history, but for all that renown, it is anything but an archetypal rock & roll album. It it isn't a rock & roll album at all. Van Morrison plays acoustic guitar and sings in his elastic, bluesy, soulful voice, accompanied by crack group of jazz studio players: guitarist Jay Berliner, upright bassist Richard Davis, Modern Jazz Quartet drummer Connie Kay, vibraphonist Warren Smith and soprano saxophonist John Payne (also credited on flute, though that's debatable - some claim an anonymous flutist provided those parts). Producer Lewis Merenstein added chamber orchestrations later and divided the album into halves: "In The Beginning" and "Afterwards" with four tunes under each heading. Morrison's songs are an instinctive, organic mixture of Celtic folk, blues, and jazz…

There are 21 cuts on this Hip-O collection of Van Morrison's Greatest Hits. The interesting thing is that of these 21 cuts, only about half of them will be recognizable to the casual Van Morrison fan, as they come from his Bang sides and the far more popular Warner Brothers singles of the early '70s. As it should be, although there is one glaring omission: "Tupelo Honey" is absent from the song list. The rest may not have been greatest hits in America, but they do represent a fine – if arguable – selection of the material from the late '70s, '80s, and '90s. "Dweller on the Threshold" is here (though it sounds like an alternate take!) There is a bona fide alternate take of "The Healing Game" that sounds more like a well-executed demo and has plenty of Celtic soul.

At the Movies: Soundtrack Hits (2007) is a 19-track compilation of Van Morrison songs featured in a film at one time or another. Rather than play like an odds-and-ends compilation of soundtrack rarities as one might expect, Soundtrack Hits plays like a best-of collection, including many of Morrison's greatest solo hits along with a couple Them songs ("Gloria," "Baby Please Don't Go"). There are several live versions in place of the studio cuts. The live versions of "Moondance" and "Brown Eyed Girl" are previously unreleased.

While 2002's Down the Road was the best Van Morrison release in ages – with its autobiographical allusions, cultural critiques, and new band – it could not have prepared listeners for the jolt of this, his Blue Note Records debut What's Wrong With This Picture? While the album is hardly a straight jazz record, it does take the territory he explored on Down the Road another step further into the classic pop music of the 20th century filtered through his own Celtic swing, R&B, vocal jazz, and blue-eyed soul. The title track that opens the album is as close to an anthem as Morrison's ever written; he states with an easy, swinging, jazzy soul groove that he is not the same person he once was and wonders why that was so difficult for others to accept. There is no bitterness or bite in his assertions. If anything, the question is asked with warm humor and amusement as if it is indeed the listener's hangup if he/she can't accept Morrison "living in the present time." He asks, "Why don't we take it down and forget about it/'Cause that ain't me at all," as the song whispers to a close.

Van Morrison never stopped recording during the 1990s, but for a little while it seemed as if he was disconnected from his muse. It wasn't so much his series of jazz cover albums – he'd return to this vein often in subsequent decades – but his songwriting that showed signs bitterness, particularly on 1995's Days Like This, where he seemed dismissive of the very notion of being a songwriter. In that light, it's hard not to see 1997's The Healing Game as a rejuvenation. Indeed, the album's very title suggests that Morrison is in the process of mending fences and reconnecting with a sense of joy, a process that began during his deep dive into Mose Allison and other bluesy jazz artists in the mid-'90s. Morrison retains that sense of swing on The Healing Game – he also retains keyboardist Georgie Fame, who would become a fixture on Morrison's albums over the next two decades – and it invigorates a set of songs that aren't necessarily all that different from what he's been writing as of late; he's still specializing in ballads, blues, and folk-rock colored by R&B.