Carly Simon - The Very Best Of Carly Simon: Nobody Does It Better (1998)

Available in the U.K., through Warner special products and Global Television, The Very Best of Carly Simon: Nobody Does It Better does indeed have budget-line roots which are apparent from just a quick glance at the packaging. There are no liner notes, apart from the track listings (on the inside, it does include publishing information), and the same photograph is presented five times (sometimes cropped, sometimes not; sometimes color, sometimes not). That may bother some consumers, and others may be a little ticked at the non-chronological sequencing, but this collection does have one big, big virtue -- it has Carly Simon's big hits, not just from the '70s, but such latter-day comebacks as "Coming Around Again" and "Let the River Run," on one disc. That alone makes the slapdash package forgivable -- in fact, it makes it worth import prices for non-U.K. residents looking for a thorough collection, since it's currently the most comprehensive on the market.