"The problem with many retrospectives is that they usually place an artist's best-known and/or best-selling songs in a sequence that can defy context. The end result can be a rather jagged listening experience. Ben Harper's By My Side seems to address that issue by looking at it directly. Instead of simply letting his label choose a slew of tracks and call it a "hits" or "best-of" collection, Harper handpicked a dozen cuts, and focused on a particular aspect of his work: ballads. In addition to ten standard-bearers from his catalog, he also chose an alternate studio version of "Not Fire Not Ice," which sounds like a nicely recorded demo (and was never available in the United States before), and provided a single new cut, a sparse, sexy, soulful number called "Crazy Amazing" with his Relentless7 bandmates. The remaining tracks are canny choices: the vast majority of them would be the very cuts his fans would choose for such a collection." -- All Music Guide

Track Listing
1 Forever
2 By My Side
3 Gold to Me
4 Diamonds on the Inside
5 In the Colors
6 Beloved One
7 Not Fire Not Ice
8 Morning Yearning Ben Harper
9 Feel Love
10 Happy Everafter in Your Eyes Ben Harper
11 Waiting on an Angel
12 Crazy Amazing