Review Text
Old Enough To Know Better: The Worst of Barry Louis Polisar Most people do a 'Greatest Hits' album after twenty or thirty years. As Barry approached the 30th year of his career, he thought he'd try something different. 'I talk a lot about the writing process in my school visits so I thought I'd challenge myself to take all my worst songs and see if I could re-write them.' And so he did. Then he went into the studio and began recording the songs and adding instruments and branching out into completely new musical directions. In fact, after recording an entire CD of twenty songs, he decided to dig up more songs and see if he could turn them into something. Hence, a bonus CD is included in this collection with an additional twenty songs. 'Ten years ago I had a chance to re-write and re-record my favorite songs,' Barry says. 'I began thinking about all the songs I had left behind. There were many songs I had written that I simply didn't like anymore. I began tinkering with many of those older songs and poems, re-writing the lyrics and changing the melodies....sometimes I kept to the spirit of the original; other times I just used the opening line to write a totally new song....And once I began recording what I had written, I had so much fun I went back to the very bottom of the well -- finding songs that I disliked even more for a second disc.' Why a double CD for kids? Polisar answers: 'I just had so many bad songs!' So here they are...Barry Louis Polisar's worst songs...but with a brand new twist! As Polisar says, 'with forty different songs and poems, there's something for everyone to dislike!'
