Paul Simon Graceland

In a remarkable career spanning six decades, singer-songwriter Paul Simon has amassed 9 Grammy awards and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, first as a member of Simon & Garfunkel, then in 2001 as a solo performer and composer. Encompassing nine studio albums - all contained herein - Simon's catalogue is one of the most diverse, literate, adventurous, and musically rich in all of popular music. Simon is an American treasure, and this awesome collection celebrates his ever-growing legacy.

Rhino remastered and expanded Paul Simon's Warner catalog in 2004, boxing up the nine albums released between 1972 and 2000 as The Complete Studio Recordings. This archival work provides the foundation for Legacy's 2013 set The Complete Album Collection, which supplements these expanded reissues – a total of 30 bonus tracks were added to the nine albums, including demos, alternate takes, outtakes, non-LP material, and live cuts (but no original hit version of "Slip Sliding Away," an oversight that remains on this 2013 box) – with the two live albums released on Warner (1974's Paul Simon in Concert: Live Rhymin', 1991's Concert in the Park), the 1965 curiosity The Paul Simon Songbook that he recorded in the wake of the disappointing reception to Simon & Garfunkel's 1964 debut Wednesday Morning 3 AM and, most importantly, the two excellent albums Simon released after 2004: 2006's Surprise and 2011's So Beautiful or So What…

Though he recorded the album's prominent percussion tracks in Brazil, Paul Simon fashioned The Rhythm of the Saints as a deliberate follow-up to the artistic breakthrough and commercial comeback that was the South Africa-tinged Graceland. Several of the musicians who had appeared previously were back, along with some of the New York session players who had worked with Simon in the 1970s, and the overall sound was familiar to fans of Graceland…

Though he recorded the album's prominent percussion tracks in Brazil, Paul Simon fashioned The Rhythm of the Saints as a deliberate follow-up to the artistic breakthrough and commercial comeback that was the South Africa-tinged Graceland. Several of the musicians who had appeared previously were back, along with some of the New York session players who had worked with Simon in the 1970s, and the overall sound was familiar to fans of Graceland. Further, Simon's nonlinear lyrical approach was carried over: he continued to ruminate about love, aging, and the onslaught of modern life in disconnected phrases and images that created impressions rather than telling straightforward stories. But where Graceland had seamlessly merged its styles into an exuberant whole, The Rhythm of the Saints was less well digested…