Pearl: The Best Collection (stylised as pearl ～The Best Collection～) is Kokia's first greatest hits album, released on February 1, 2006. It was released simultaneously with her first video clips collection, Jewel: The Best Video Collection.

The album featured material from her time with Mother Land management under Victor Entertainment (2003-2006). In this time, Kokia had released two albums (Remember Me and Uta ga Chikara), along with seven singles. After working with Mother Land, she set up her own personal management company, Anco & Co., and has worked with them ever since.

Three singles were released after Uta ga Chikara, and only feature on Pearl. The first of these, "Dandelion" (released 11 months prior in late February 2005), was used as the ending theme song for a Nippon Television documentary show . The second was also featured in a TV show, . This single, "Time to Say Goodbye," was released five months after "Dandelion," in July 2005.

The final single was released on New Year's Day in 2006: "Ai no Melody/Chōwa Oto (With Reflection)." The songs were used as the opening and ending theme songs for the animated film Origin: Spirits of the Past. This single was released a month prior to the best collection.

The idea of releasing a greatest hits album was first suggested to her by her Mother Land director in early 2005, after he noted the number of singles and soundtrack songs Kokia had.

Kokia chose the title "Pearl" due to the secondary meaning of the word as an item of great beauty. She believed it created an image of a pearl necklace, where each of Kokia's songs were created from within her then threaded onto the necklace of her greatest hits album. Kokia also considered the songs to develop inside of herself like how pearls develop in seashells: by developing around something she has on her mind.

The title of Kokia's second greatest hits is thematically related to Pearl, since Kokia named it Coquillage (the French word for shell).

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Wikipedia