Coming off possibly the biggest failure of his professional career -- the critically savaged Broadway musical The Capeman -- Paul Simon buys time until his next move by once again revisiting the biggest successes of his solo career on this 19-track best-of. There's no void being filled: Simon already compiled many of the same songs on 1988's Negotiations and Love Songs. Nevertheless, it's difficult to find fault with most of the selections here, which illustrate Simon's ability to soak up musical influences without losing his own richly literate, effortlessly mellifluous style. Long before the term "world beat" was coined, Simon took reggae (Mother and Child Reunion), gospel (Love Me Like a Rock), Latin (Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard) and African vocal harmonies (Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes) to the pop charts. Few other singer-songwriters of his generation made songs as rhythmically intoxicating as Late in the Evening, with its snaky bass-drum interplay, or The Obvious Child, with its heavy martial percussion. Even the two Capeman songs don't sound out of place; they've certainly aged better than 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover. That one's terribly silly, isn't it?

Sunday, May 28, 2000

Paul Simon recaps his career