Canter Bridge

Every once in a while an anthology covering the high points of an artist’s career simply dazzles with the accumulated weight of one memorable musical statement following upon another. The danger of beginning a review of Carly Simon’s Reflections with such an observation is that it may understate her achievement.

Upon a fifth or sixth listening to this greatest hits album, one is left wondering how she did it. There must have been very few years without a CS tune at the top of the charts thoughtfully probing what love means, why men are as they are, and why women love them anyway.

It is bad math and sad psychology to size up an artist’s soul by counting the themes she devotes on a greatest hits album to the distinct themes about which her music resolves. But it’s hardly a worthless enterprise, so here we go:

On six tracks, Carly traces the tortured landscape of family and relatiional strife: Beginning with the ironic ‘That’s the Way it Should Be’ and continuing on to her inimitable duet with Jagger ‘You’re So Vain’, Simon shows herself well acquainted with all the reasons not to love, yet indicates in the end that none is decisive. ‘Jesse’ is in fact a humorous statement of just that injudicious element of the human condition.

The gorgeous, lilting ‘Coming Around Again’, the heart-rending (can one still use that word without melodrama?) ‘Better Not Tell Her’ and the poignant ‘LIke a River’ round out this introspective vein in Simon’s collected works.

Just as there is loneliness in life, so one track exposes the loneliness of life in the spotlight: ‘Legend in Your Own TImes’.

Finally, and in roughly equal measure to her contemplation of the pain of it all, Carly sings of the sheer delight of love and, of course, the anticipation of it: ‘Anticipation’, ‘The Right Thing to Do’, ‘Mockingbird’, the ineffably beautiful ‘I Haven’t Got Time for the Pain’, ‘Nobody Does it Better’, ‘The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of’, and ‘Give Me All Night’. These are the tunes that work themselves into one’s soul and rise, unbidden , to the lips.

Yet until one meets them in one collection, it is possible not to notice their cumulative force.

Carly Simon was one of the second half of the twentieth century’s definitive vocal artists. Like this reviewer, you might not have recognized that, enthralled as we were by each facet of the gem. One at a time. But, put together, how they sparkle!