The Very Best of Chicago: Only the Beginning

The Very Best of Chicago: Only the Beginning
US CD cover art
Greatest hits album by Chicago
Released	July 2, 2002 (2002-07-02)
Recorded	January 1969 – January 1995
Genre	Rock jazz fusion adult contemporary soft rock pop rock
Length	157:44
Label	Rhino
Producer	James William Guercio, Phil Ramone, Chicago, David Foster, Chas Sandford, Ron Nevison, Bruce Fairbairn, David McLees
Chicago chronology
Chicago XXVI: Live in Concert (1999) The Very Best of Chicago: Only the Beginning (2002) The Box (2003)
Chicago compilation chronology
The Heart of Chicago 1967-1998 Volume II (1998) The Very Best of Chicago: Only the Beginning (2002) Love Songs (2005)
Alternative cover
Europe, Australia CD cover art

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[1]

The Very Best of Chicago: Only the Beginning is a double greatest hits album by the American band Chicago, their twenty-seventh album overall. Released in 2002, this collection marked the beginning of a long-term partnership with Rhino Entertainment which, between 2002 and 2005, would remaster and re-release Chicago's 1969–1980 Columbia Records catalog.

In Europe, a greatest hits compilation was released as The Chicago Story: Complete Greatest Hits with a different track listing.

The Very Best of Chicago: Only the Beginning combines almost all of Chicago's greatest successes from their entire recording career up to that point, excerpting material from all of their regular studio albums with the exception of 1979's Chicago 13 and 1980's Chicago XIV. Several songs appear in an edited form, including "I'm a Man", which is missing the Danny Seraphine drum solo, and "Dialogue (Part I & II)", which is presented in its shortened single version. There is a new edit of “Make Me Smile”—which bridges the namesake part and the “Now More Than Ever” part of the “Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon” together as in the original single, but without omitting the full intro or guitar solo of the former or the full outro of the latter,—and a new version of “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?”—which is a stereo version of the original single, including all but the free-form piano intro.