Come Get It: The Very Best of Aaron Carter

A little over two years after the release of Aaron Carter's first compilation, 2003's Most Requested Hits, Jive/Legacy released Come Get It: The Very Best of Aaron Carter in the first month of 2006. Since Carter only had two charting singles as a teen and pre-teen pop star, that's a lot of comps for somebody who never was a huge star, but given that BMG, the parent company of his label, Jive, merged with Sony the year after Most Requested Hits was released, it's understandable that Sony's catalog division would want to release their own Carter comp. What's not quite so understandable is that Aaron's first hit, "Shake It," is absent from both Most Requested Hits and Come Get It, and it's not the only song missing on the 2006 disc, either. Michael Hill's good liner notes mention songs like "Surfin' USA" and "(Have Some) Fun with the Funk" as being pivotal moments in Carter's career, but they're nowhere to be found — and the disc itself is three songs shorter than the previous comp, as well. That doesn't mean it's an inferior collection, however. Aaron Carter is better in small doses, which means the tighter Come Get It not only benefits from its concise running time, but it has a sharper song selection and sequencing than Most Requested Hits, too. While that may not be enough to reveal Aaron Carter as a great forgotten teen pop star from the turn of the millennium — frankly, he never had great songs and his pubescent charm wears thin for anybody who wasn't a pre-teen in 2000 — it is enough to make Come Get It the definitive document of Carter's height of near-stardom.