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The booklet contains no lyrics but does have liner notes written by Billy Sloan. Here we get so many amazing tracks, i.e., "Promised you a miracle", "Alive and Kicking" and the unforgetable "Don't You (Forget About Me". 4/5. The Best of Simple Minds being the second greatest hits album from Simple Minds and is truly a gem for a child of the 80's. I remember dancing to these tracks back in the 80's and they bring back so many memories for me.
Some of the songs are a bit repetitive for my tastes but there are half a dozen great songs on this CD. I might have added a couple other tracks to this CD but it is pretty much a "Best of" CD.
Several of them suffer from the "edit disease." If you like the full versions of these songs, avoid this compilation.
Buy it, highly recommended. music takes you back to your high school years in the 80's.
The rain of "Don't You" ought to remind of Moses prayer/prediction (Deuteronomy 32:2) that his teaching would fall like rain, giving hope that the best moral teachings continue to erode our hearts of stone even it appears that world remains mostly a loveless place."Will you stand above me.Look my way, never love meRain keeps falling, rain keeps fallingDown, down, down."Disc 2 is a bit more direct in that it features songs dealing with contemporary political/human rights issues. Eliot once wrote "For us there is only the trying. "Mandela Day," "Biko," and "Belfast Child" evoke powerful feelings.Yet Simple Minds is at its best through indirect angst. Old and new fans will pump loving fists (a la Judd Nelson at the end of "The Breakfast Club") in the air in solidarity. Yet maturity gives greater weight to the songs. Casual fans may think Simple Minds has gone the way of the Brat Pack but not so fast. This seminal band is still together, reinventing itself at least once a decade. "Let There Be Love" goes after the same idea.
Keith Forsey combined water with the oft-used light imagery used by Kerr. The rest is not our business." That confident statement of faith can be spotted in the title of Simple Minds' official biography - "The Race is the Prize."That sentiment pulses through this CD, showing even after three decades the music of Simple Minds is alive and kicking. Throughout the 32 songs of "The Best of Simple Minds" sharp ears will pick up echoes of Lou Reed, David Bowie, U2, and Bruce Springsteen (Kerr wrote that Springsteen's "Born to Run" is the greatest rock song ever).In that same 2008 piece (see www.simpleminds.com Web site), Scotland native Kerr wrote that he feels very much like an American thanks to his marriage, child, work, and lifestyle. Eliot. Displaying the band's endearing edginess, "Sanctify Yourself" jumps into the minefield of social action, or applied religion, ending with a prayer for proper guidance with Christian overtones."You can't stop the world for a boy or a girlSweet victims of poor circumstancesBut you can pour back the love, sweeping down from aboveGiving hope and making more chancesWell, I hope and I pray that maybe somedayYou'll come back down here and show me the way."The song's title supplies the added profundity that the only person you can change directly is yourself. His sensibility can be likened to that of the American-turned-British poet T.S. This year (2008) being the 30th anniversary of the group's creation, 2002's "The Best of Simple Minds" is a good way to review accomplishments and get jazzed for future releases.Disc 1 is sure to activate memories of those who went to college in the 1980s (as I did).
Borrowing liberally from traditional religion, the band adds bits from musical heroes and contemporaries. But it sure could have been. Years pass and meanings broaden.You 40-somethings recalling your crushes on Ally Sheedy (I'm still in the throes of mine) and Emilio Estevez might happen to notice Simple Minds' habitual references to activating light in "Don't You (Forget About Me)," "Alive and Kicking," "Glittering Prize," and "See The Lights." This concept comes to us through band's religious veins, carrying the blood of life/light to the heart (that same heart wears a royal crown and adorns the cover of our CD as well as 1987's "Live in The City of Light.").Jim Kerr, lead vocalist and prodigious songwriter of Simple Minds, knows his Genesis (not just his friend Peter Gabriel's band Genesis but the Genesis of the Bible) - G-d created light first and that necessarily precedes everything we do."Sanctify Yourself" talks of activating love (which is really the same thing as light). All great social movements start with the heart of the individual."Alive and Kicking" counsels persistence whether in relations with G-d or a fellow human, leading to renewal of affections."Who's got the touch to calm the storm inside.Don't say goodbyeDon't say goodbyeIn the final seconds who's gonna save you.Oh, alive and kickingStay until your love is, love is, alive and kicking.""Don't You (Forget About Me)," thanks to "The Breakfast Club" movie, is Simple Minds' best known song (even corporate radio plays this one) yet it was not written by Kerr or Charlie Burchill.
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