The Paul Simon Anthology

PAUL SIMON: "The Paul Simon Anthology" (Warners)

ANY HALF decent Paul Simon anthology is going to feature more standards than The International Directory Of Flags And Emblems. When, in the liner notes of this particular compilation, Philip Glass compares Simon to composers such as Porter, Gershwin and Berlin, he really isn't just honking the horns of hyperbole. What we're talking about here is one of the most important and ingenious songwriters of the twentieth century.

Just run your finger down the track listing of Disc One alone and count the classics. A million buskers and muzak-makers may have bled the life out of songs such as 'The Sound Of Silence', 'El Condor Pasa', 'The Boxer', 'Mrs Robinson' and 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' but the originals can still glisten and gleam.

It was after he split with Art Garfunkel, however, that Simon's work began to invade genuinely ground-breaking levels of subtlety, scope and complexity. 'Me And Julio Down By The School Yard', 'Mother And Child Reunion', 'Loves Me Like A Rock' and 'Slip Slidin' Away' still stand among the most refined and ambitious pop statements ever, seamless marriages of lyrical intelligence and musicality.

Almost casually, Paul Simon seemed to invent idioms that were quickly absorbed into popular culture. The phrase '50 Ways To Leave Your Lover' was recently cited as one of the most widely-used headlines in American newspapers and magazines, and, apparently, the term 'Still Crazy After All These Years' didn't even exist as a colloquialism until that day in 1974 when Simon stepped into the shower and started humming those words to himself as a sort of assessment of how he felt at the time.

Anyway, anyone who could see the caption 'Rene And Georgette Magritta With Their Dog After The War' in a photographic exhibition and then turn it into a catchy pop chorus has to be some sort of genius.

Of course, the real miracle about Paul Simon is that having reached his mid-forties and having achieved such widespread acclaim, he managed to so thoroughly re-invent himself. With the release of Graceland in 1986 and then Rhythm Of The Saints in 1990, he was transformed from simple Rhymin' Simon into a globetrotting guru of musical miscegenation.

Ethnic elements, primary Latin and gospel, had always had a place in his work but he now decided to venture even further and to try for a total synthesis of the primal and the self-consciously sophisticated. The result was some of the most inspired writing of his career and Disc Two of Anthology is made up of generous selections from both albums.

The words of the prophets are indeed written on the subway walls and tenement halls, and Paul Simon has always been one of their most faithful interpreters. No home should be without at least one of his songbooks.

• Liam Fay