The Best of Simple Minds by Simple Minds (CD, Jun-2002, 2 Discs, Virgin Records USA)

The Best of Simple Minds includes songs from all of their albums from 1978 to 1998 and it does a pretty good job of encompassing all their albums.

It is interesting to see how the band has evolved over twenty years. At first, Simple Minds was basically a punk-rock band. Much of their early music had lyrics that were very repetitive and a very flat beat and wasn't very interesting to listen to. In 1982, Simple Minds changed their tune dramatically, adopting New Wave, which was very popular in the early '80s and combining New-Wave sounds and bubblegum pop with lyrics with a message. In my mind, Simple Minds' best years musically were from 1982 to 1991. Their music was trendy yet the lyrics were very powerful and hard-hitting, but not in an in-your-face way.

The CD also songs from later releases such as She's a River. While the album is good at encompassing all of Simple Minds' releases, I think that the quality of their music declined after 1991. Songs like She's a River sound like a return to their days of punk rock, with flatter tunes and less use of synthesizers.

Overall, I give this album 4/5. While it does a good job of representing all of Simple Minds' work, I think that the Simple Minds band made a terrible mistake of abandoning their winning combination of mood-music, new-wave and thought-provoking lyrics, going instead towards flatter tunes with considerably less variation in the music and more wooden lyrics.

If you want a sampling of Simple Minds song, this might be a good CD, but if you want their best stuff, you should buy their albums from 1982 to 1991.