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John Fogerty, the songwriter and frontman behind legendary rock group Creedence Clearwater Revival, has released a new album that seems like a clear attempt to supplant Chronicle, CCR’s mega-bestselling “greatest hits” album, on the shelves.

Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years, releases today digitally and on physical media. The record features 20 tracks — the same number of songs as Chronicle — although there are four new titles and four old-school CCR tracks missing. That said, the album covers all the biggest hits from Fogerty’s Creedence years, including songs like “Proud Mary,” “Fortunate Son,” and “Bad Moon Rising.”

And when we say “covers,” well…we don’t just mean that they’re represented. Each song on Legacy is newly-recorded. The record itself is being released to celebrate not just Fogerty’s recent 80th birthday, but also the fact that, in 2023, he finally regained majority control of his publishing rights after 50 years of trying.

In a move that will be familiar to fans of Taylor Swift, Fogerty tagged each of the new songs with “John’s Version.”

The symbolic change likely also, finally, cuts his surviving former bandmates out of future royalties after decades of animosity. The band burned short and bright, and then fought for decades.

Fogerty had played with his brother Tom, as well as bandmates Doug Clifford and Stu Cook, for almost a decade before their band — previously known as The Blue Velvets and then the Golliwogs — changed its name to Creedence Clearwater Revival. After the name change, CCR was incredibly prolific, releasing dozens of songs between 1968 and 1972. In 1971, though, Tom Fogerty left the group. He and his brother never fully reconciled before Tom’s death in 1990, and disputes between John Fogerty, his remaining bandmates, and their record label, persisted for decades, both in and out of court.

The band ultimately broke up due to a variety of personal and professional conflicts, but not before releasing “Sweet Hitch-Hiker,” their final top-ten single (which, ironically, is one of the tracks Fogerty declined to re-record for Legacy), and “Someday Never Comes,” a heartfelt song that cracked the Top 40 in spite of weaker than expected sales for the band’s final LP.

Creedence Clearwater Revival broke up in 1972, with basically every member of the band admitting that they had negotiated the worst record deal of virtually any major rock act. Expected to record eight more albums for Fantasy Fecords, Fogerty traded his share of the CCR rights to free himself of the arrangement. Fogerty and the band had bad blood with Saul Zaentz, the head of the label, who had promised to do right by the band once they became hitmakers but reneged. Years later, Zaentz and Fogerty would sue one another more than once.

Zaentz sued Fogerty over his 1985 song “The Old Man Down the Road,” saying that it was essentially a reworking of “Run Through the Jungle,” a song owned by Fantasy. The suit failed after Fogerty performed the songs for a jury and demonstrated the differences between them. Zaentz also sued Fogerty for defamation over a pair of songs, “Mister Greed” and “Zanz Kant Danz.” Zaentz argued that both of those songs were about him, and Fogerty seemingly confirmed it, agreeing to change “Zanz” to “Vanz.”

Cook and Clifford performed as Creedence Clearwater Revisited, a CCR tribute band, until they retired in 2020. At one point, Fogerty unsuccessfully tried to prevent them from using the name. For years, Fogerty frustrated fans by refusing to perform CCR songs live, citing the deep animosity between himself, his band, and the label.

Chronicle, released in 1976, was a huge moneymaker for Fantasy. The record has spent 622 non-consecutive weeks on the Billboard 200 since its release, the fifth-highest of any album on the chart.

(As a point of comparison, the top four are Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd; Legend by Bob Marley & the Wailers; Greatest Hits by Journey; and Metallica by Metallica.)

Chronicle remains so consistently popular that you can walk into almost any Walmart or Target store and find it on vinyl today.

The Creedence Clearwater Revival catalog was Fantasy’s crown jewel, and its success helped Zaentz leap from music into film production. He served as producer on a number of popular films, including the Best Picture winners One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus, and The English Patient. With the record company fully in control of the CCR rights, the band’s short lifespan was not much of a trouble; songs like “Fortunate Son” and “I Put A Spell On You” appeared on the screen regularly.

In 2002, Fogerty’s feud with Zaentz went public one last time, as Fantasy licensed “Fortunate Son” to Wrangler for a jeans commercial. After Fogerty fumed about the move in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Wrangler unilaterally ended the campaign, having seemingly been unaware of the long and fraught history between Fogerty and the company that owned his music rights.

Zaentz finally sold Fantasy Records to Concord Records in 2004. Concord, well aware of the relationship between Zaentz and Fogerty, reinstated and increased the artist’s royalties as one of its first orders of business and has worked to patch their relationship with the remaining members of CCR.

In 2022, Fogerty and his wife/manager Julie realized that after 56 years, Fogerty could terminate the copyright transfer and ownership of his songs would revert to him in the United States. The couple proposed to Concord that instead of waiting until Fogerty was 85 and taking domestic rights for nothing, the Fogertys could buy a majority share in the global rights, allowing Fogerty to enjoy more time as the owner of his music and giving Concord value for the catalog.

The exact details of the deal have never been disclosed, but as of January 2023, Fogerty took control of his catalog for the first time in over 50 years. The artist turned 80 years old on May 28th and is the only member of CCR still actively playing live music.

On May 29th, while playing a concert celebrating his birthday at New York’s Beacon Theatre, Fogerty announced Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years. His sons Shane and Tyler play on the new record with him.

And, as of today, you can get Legacy, released by Concord Records, on vinyl and CD at Target, Walmart, and other places that are less corporate and evil.