Any songwriter worth his stripes would admit that a “Best Of”
collection is a downright scary proposition. To go back in time, to
revisit the emotional landscape laid bare in dozens and dozens of
songs, to line all your musical children up, from the scrawniest to the
strongest to the most entertaining, and single them out as better than
the rest is a heart-wrenching, seemingly impossible task. And there’s a
certain amount of disbelief that comes with the distance. Wow…was that
really me at that moment? Yes. Yes, it was.