There's nothing The Simpsons haven't taken on, both on and off screen. So it was only a matter of time before many of their most popular and witty songs ended up in a songbook for those adventurous enough to sing along. In fact my only real complaint about the book is it's too short; a decade of episodes have given us enough songs to fill several musicals on Broadway and this is just a small sample. But the songs that are here are well loved and some of their most popular.
The book is split into three sections: Theme Songs, Pop Tunes, and Production Numbers. All have piano parts with vocals and guitar tabliture. Now I don't play guitar, so I can't comment much on that, but I've got a tiny bit of piano training under my belt. The difficulty level of the songs vary. Some have simple, fairly straightforward chords that can be played easily, like Canyonero and We Do (The Stonecutters ' Song). A good number are rather difficult, requiring more training then I have and a bit of practice to get up to tempo. And the rest are very awkward or difficult, either because they are reductions of larger orchestrations or simply were songs never ment to be played on the piano. Several of the raps like Do The Bartman and Deep Deep Trouble don't work well as just some quick piano chords. So while anyone who's at least heard the songs before should be able to take the melody line and belt out most of the tune, it's gonna take a bit more effort to get the music to go along with it.
Overall it's a fun book to browse through, and it brought some smiles as I remember such great numbers like the songs from Stop The Planet Of The Apes and most of the Shari Bobbins' parodies of Merry Poppins. If you really love The Simpsons, or are ready to take some piano lessons, then this songbook is for you.