Album Notes

The whole point of writing songs is to share experiences with people, says Bruce Cockburn, looking back on a career that includes 26 albums, numerous international awards, including the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Tenco Award for Lifetime Achievement in Italy, 20 gold and platinum records in Canada, and countless concert performances since he released his first solo work in 1970. Cockburn's collected work is a journey-both moody and revelatory-into the dark night and the sweet laughter of the soul, around the world with vivid imagery and unflinching observations of human cruelty, greed, courage, and survival through faith, and back home to the peaceful forests and vibrant cities of his native Canada.

It's the wheel going around, he says. The stuff from the '70s was a product of inward-looking exercises, and then it got very much outward directed through the 80s, and started to swing back so that you get some of both in the '90s, and by the end of the '90s, it's back to internal again, but in what I hope is a deeper way. It's not my idea that love is at the center of everything, but I believe it is, and I understand a lot more about that than I did in the '70s. Cockburn's remarkable journey plays out in the 16 songs on his new greatest hits compilation, Anything Anytime Anywhere (Singles 1979-2002).