His Seventies masterworks still stand out in his career like Phil Rizzuto's 1950 MVP season. The first remains the best: Paul Simon is a blast of city-kid humor and Latin-inflected acoustic grooving, with classics like "Run That Body Down," "Papa Hobo," and "Armistice Day." Simon cuts back o... 

 Simon had more success with the sequel There Goes Rhymin' Simon, featuring the bouncy pop hits "Kodachrome" and "Loves Me Like a Rock."  

 On Still Crazy After All These Years, his second-best album, he's a gloomy poet with a weakness for fluffy keyboards, but he atones for all the electro-piano schlock with his funniest, nastiest urban romances, especially "You're Kind," "Have a Good Time,' and "50 Ways To Leave Your... 

 His 1979 collection Greatest Hits, Etc. is long out of print, sad to say, and The Paul Simon Collection is an inferior substitute that emphasizes his softer side.  

 Simon floundered for a few years, releasing only the clock-watching soundtrack to his film One Trick Pony.  

 But he found his feet on Hearts and Bones, inspired by his brief show-biz marriage to Carrie Fisher. Ignored at the time, forgotten now, it's a hidden gem.  

 It also introduced the tart songwriting style that paid off on Graceland, his big 1986 comeback. Simon traveled to Johannesburg to collaborate with South African mbaqanga musicians, resulting in one of the Eighties most acclaimed hits, not to mention the first Paul Simon album where anybody notic... 

 The Rhythm of the Saints tried to redo Graceland, except with Brazilian drummers and weak songs.  

 Live Rhymin' was a stiff 1974 concert LP; Concert in the Park remakes his most famous songs with busy new arrangements, though Garfunkel doesn't show up.  

 Since then, he's only revisited the studio for minor efforts like Songs from the Capeman (a failed rehab job on his flop Broadway musical The Capeman) and You're the One, a relatively straightforward album with jazzy touched.  

 Since then, he's only revisited the studio for minor efforts like Songs from the Capeman (a failed rehab job on his flop Broadway musical The Capeman) and You're the One, a relatively straightforward album with jazzy touched.  

 His 1979 collection Greatest Hits, Etc. is long out of print, sad to say, and The Paul Simon Collection is an inferior substitute that emphasizes his softer side.  

 The Studio Recordings is a box that augments each of Simon's individual studio albums with bonus tracks, mostly demos and work tapes–Simon has never been prolific enough to leave finished songs off his albums. But the rarities are prime, especially the 1971 demo of "Me and Julio," featurin... 

 The not-bad Surprise plays like a sister record to You’re the One, with one key difference: Production help from Brian Eno, who outfits some of Simon’s songs yet with spacey accoutrements. Despite the album’s shiny surface, Simon sounds like Simon: He slides easily between sour and sweet, d...