Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons – Working Our Way Back To You: The Ultimate Collection
Why This is the Blueprint for the Perfect Box Set
Hi, Phil Aston here from Now Spinning Magazine – and this really is the biggest box set I have ever unboxed. Not just on the channel, but in my entire life as a music fan and collector.
We’re talking about Working Our Way Back To You: The Ultimate Collection from Madfish Records – a six-kilogram monument to Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons. Over 44 CDs and 1 LP, more than 800 tracks, 31 studio albums, 195 singles, live sets, demos, outtakes, lost albums, Motown sessions and more. It’s not just a box set – it’s a complete musical biography.
And here’s the thing I really want you to think about as you read this:
Even if Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons aren’t your band,
imagine if this exact level of care and depth was given to your favourite artist.
This set is proof of what can be done when a label, the artist and archivists all pull together with one aim: to create the ultimate archive for fans.
A Box Set With Actual Girth
Let’s start with the physical presence. You don’t so much pick this up as brace yourself and lift.
44 CDs + 1 LP
Over 800 tracks
Limited to 2,500 copies
Weighs around 6kg
The box has that familiar Madfish “lift the lid like an iPhone” feel – except in this case it’s more like lifting the lid on a fully built iMac. It’s beautifully made, rock solid, and once you start removing layers you realise just how much is packed in here.
This isn’t just a stack of discs with a flimsy booklet dropped on top. Every layer reveals something substantial and thoughtfully designed for collectors.
The Collector’s Notes – Proper Track-by-Track Detail
Right under the lid is the Collector’s Notes & Track Information book from Four Seasons archivist Ken Charmer.
For each disc you get:
Full track listings
Where the bonus tracks come from
Notes on mixes, live sources, alternates and outtakes
Dates, context and background
This is exactly what we all say we want from box sets. No vague “bonus track” labelling, no guessing where things are from – it’s all laid out clearly. If you’re the sort of fan who loves knowing which single mix this is, or where that live version comes from, this book is worth its weight on its own.
Again, imagine this level of documentation for your favourite band’s archive. This is how you treat a catalogue properly.
The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette – Mono Vinyl in All Its Glory
Next up is something really special: a replica triple fold-out LP of The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette in its original mono mix, on vinyl, available here for the first time ever.
Stunning multi-foldout newspaper-style sleeve
Period-correct graphics and layout
A booklet inside the sleeve
The album itself in glorious mono
You don’t usually get vinyl inside these massive CD-based Madfish sets – but here, they’ve made an exception, and it really adds to that sense of this being an art object as well as an audio archive.
For Four Seasons fans, this is an instant collector’s item. For the rest of us, it’s a reminder that labels can do this when they want to: honour an album’s original concept and presentation, not just throw the music on a disc and call it done.
The Global Singles & EP Portfolio – A World Tour in 7-Inch Form
Then we get to the singles and EPs book – a large, beautifully printed volume dedicated purely to picture sleeves and releases from around the world:
UK, USA, France, Sweden, New Zealand, Japan, Chile, Netherlands, Spain, Mexico, Norway, Belgium, Brazil…
Frankie Valli solo and The Four Seasons
A visual history of how these songs travelled and were marketed globally
For those of us who grew up collecting 7-inch singles, this is pure joy. You’re reminded of a time when:
Singles were events
Artwork mattered
Different territories put their own spin on presentation
And then, just when you think the book can’t offer more, you hit the chart position spreads – a sort of giant spreadsheet where you can see how key songs performed around the world.
Want to know how “Big Girls Don’t Cry” did in Japan? It’s in there.
Again – imagine a book like this for your favourite artist.
The Coffee Table Book – The Story, Told Properly
The heart of the set is the 144-page hardback coffee table book:
Written by long-time Seasons expert Paul Sexton
Interviews conducted by Ken Sharp
Contributions from Brian Wilson, Barry & Maurice Gibb, Billy Joel and more
Track lists, credits, photos and memorabilia throughout
This isn’t filler. It feels like a serious, definitive written history of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons:
From early days in New Jersey
Through the wave of 60s hits
The experimental and soulful late 60s and 70s
Disco, comebacks, reinventions
All the way up to Frankie still performing into his 90s
The design and print quality are superb – large photos, readable font size (a surprisingly rare thing in box sets!), and a real sense of narrative. It feels like an authorised biography and reference book combined.
Crucially, this whole project has been compiled with the full co-operation of Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudio, which shines through in both the interviews and the care taken with the music itself. This is not one of those “label owns the tapes, artist has no say” cash-ins. The artist’s voice and vision are very much present.
The Music: 44 CDs, 31 Studio Albums, and Then Some
On to the discs themselves.
Inside the box, the CDs are grouped in multiple “blocks”, and even when you think you’ve emptied a layer, another batch of albums is sitting underneath. It just keeps going.
You get:
31 newly remastered studio albums covering 1961–2016
All worldwide singles, including:
“Sherry”
“Big Girls Don’t Cry”
“Walk Like a Man”
“Beggin’”
“December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)”
“Who Loves You”
“Working My Way Back to You”
Bonus live albums
Demos, outtakes and B-sides
Motown tracks, including long-sought-after material
“The lost disco album”, now found
Christmas albums, alternative mixes, extended 12-inch versions… the lot
Every disc comes in a mini gatefold sleeve, many reproducing the original artwork. Where appropriate, some discs include both mono and stereo versions of the same album on one CD, just as collectors love to see.
The remastering is consistently strong, and you get the sense that nothing has been done on autopilot. This feels curated, not just compiled.
This is why I’ve called it a kind of musical archaeology. It doesn’t just gather the hits – it excavates the entire recorded life of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons across seven decades of popular music.
A Career That Runs Through Every Era
One of the things that really hits you as you go through the box is just how long Frankie Valli has been active.
From the 1950s…
Through the 60s pop explosion
Into 70s soul and disco
The 80s, 90s, 2000s
Right up into the 2010s, still performing live well into his 90s
Very few artists have a story that stretches so seamlessly across every era of modern pop music. This box allows you to hear that evolution in sequence – the changing production styles, songwriting approaches, and arrangements – while the voice and core musical DNA remain constant.
It really does feel like opening a portal from New Jersey in the 50s all the way to the present day.
Value, Availability and the Demographic Question
At the time of recording the video, there were roughly 700 copies left out of the 2,500. The box originally retailed at around £350, which, given the sheer scale and quality, is perfectly justifiable. Some lucky members of the Now Spinning Magazine Facebook Group have picked it up at around £150 when discounts appeared – an absolute bargain for something of this magnitude.
I suspect one of the reasons it hasn’t completely vanished instantly is demographic:
Frankie Valli is now in his 90s
Many of the fans who grew up with these records are in their late 70s and 80s
A lot of them aren’t on YouTube, social media, or browsing specialist sites daily
Some may not have the space or the inclination for a 6kg box set
But that’s exactly why I wanted to feature it. Because for those of us who are still actively collecting, who love physical music and serious archival projects, this shows what can be done when a label really goes all in.
This Is How You Do an “Ultimate Collection”
We see the words Ultimate, Definitive, Super Deluxe thrown around constantly. Often it just means:
The original album
A handful of extras
Maybe a DVD or Blu-ray
Thin booklet, minimal notes
And then a few years later – another “definitive” edition appears.
With Working Our Way Back To You, it genuinely feels like Madfish and everyone involved sat down and said:
“What would the ultimate box set for this artist actually look like?”
And then they did it.
They looked through the eyes of fans, brought in the artist and key collaborators, and asked: What would we want if this was our favourite band?
That’s why, when I talk about other artists – Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and so on – this is the standard I hold up. Instead of endless piecemeal releases, imagine one deeply researched, properly remastered, beautifully presented archive like this.
This is the blueprint.
I absolutely adore this set. Not just because of the music – which is wonderful, joyful, emotional and historically important – but because of what it represents:
A label that takes physical product seriously
An artist who cares about how their legacy is presented
Archivists and writers who respect detail and fans
A genuine attempt to do it once, and do it right
If you’re a Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons fan, this might well be the greatest music-related object you’ll ever own.
If you’re not a fan, I still hope this review has given you something: a sense of what’s possible. Think of your favourite artist. Imagine a box like this for them. That’s the conversation I’d love to see happening between fans and labels.
Let me know in the comments:
Which artist would you like to see given the “Frankie Valli treatment”?
And if you’ve already bought this set, I’d love to hear how far you’ve got into it – has anyone managed to listen to everything yet?
ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE FRANKIE VALLI AND THE FOUR SEASONS BOX SET HERE
Thank you for reading, thank you for being here, and remember:
Music is the healer and the doctor.
Phil Aston | Now Spinning Magazine
