For all his success and the plaudits that Paul Simon has received over his career, I sometimes think that his audience and his peers have sometimes treated him rather badly.

He could do remarkable work as a solo artist, but he’d have to suffer endlessly repeated cries that he let Art Garfunkel sing with him. He could take the artistic risk of making his own movie, or a Broadway play, but he would be put under a microscope so powerful that every flaw would be analyzed and discussed, rather than focusing on the overall merit. Even when he recorded his masterwork, “Graceland,” the world was full of ‘politically correct’ people who could not see the forest for the trees, and tried to defame Simon as if he had done something unethical by utilizing African musicians to make his album.

Throughout the process, though, Simon never seemed to so much as flinch from the criticism, though, perhaps because in his heart of hearts he knew that he was right and he knew there was nothing wrong with following his muse. If the album failed, perhaps he never would have seen the reassessments and retractions from world organizations and high-minded critics, and that could have left him very bitter indeed.

Luckily, “Graceland” signaled a commercial rebirth for Simon, and although most of the world also sees it as a creative rebirth as well, it is really just a continuation of the path he had been on all of his life, and an artistic high point in his career. Featured tracks include;

1) The Boy in the Bubble

2) Graceland

3) I Know What I Know

4) Gumboots

5) Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes

6) You Can Call Me Al

7) Under African Skies

8) Homeless

9) Crazy Love, vol. II

10) That Was Your Mother

11) All Around the World, or The Myth of Fingerprints