

The duo is ensconced in some untoward situation, though the mystery of what they did is intel Simon claims even he is not privy to. That is until you take into account the picaresque story of Julio and the unnamed narrator.

The bright guitar playing, the Brazilian cuíca drum laughing like a bird, and the allegro tempo in a major key (and that cheery whistling) all culminate in a good feeling. This is incorrect, especially on “Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard,” which Simon himself called “probably the happiest song I ever wrote” in Robert Hillburn’s definitive book Paul Simon: The Life. Perhaps due to the world-weariness of Simon & Garfunkel’s songs, people often pigeonhole Simon as a dreary dude. Feinberg says in Eighty-Sixed, his roman à clef about gay life in New York’s 1980s. “I sat around playing the collected works of Paul Simon on my stereo and feeling sorry for myself,” the writer David B. It’s a heartwarming ballad of love lost, refound, not rekindled, but remembered as just another up and down in a wild and crazy life. The word crazy in the title, to me, never stung as a pejorative, but is instead more like the crazy of “a wild and crazy guy” - not someone you avoid in the street, but someone to whom you offer a big hug. “Still Crazy” is not a bitter song it’s about acceptance. At the time, circa 1974, Simon would often take long showers, “to wash away the sadness.” His marriage to Peggy Harper was falling apart and songwriting has always been how Simon processed his feelings. “Still Crazy After All These Years” is a phrase that came to Simon while he was in the shower. The music counts among its chipper sounds the return of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, a horn section, a synthesizer solo, and the guitar of Cameroon native Vincent Nguini, who shares a rare co-songwriter credit with Simon.ĭominated by a plodding Fender Rhodes line that’s always airy, never bogged down by how many chords Simon has written into this thing, “Still Crazy After All These Years” is the original “ Same Old Lang Syne.” By which I mean it tackled the nostalgia of bumping into your old lover set to heavy strings and ending in the anticlimactic feeling of saudade years before Dan Fogelberg’s similar song. Either way, this is one of those Simon songs where it’s not worth ruminating on the words as much as the feeling it evokes. The lyrics are opaque - a tad glib - but the family is saved from a lonely life with “sorrows everywhere you turn” by Christ, though, reading between the lines, the musical clan may have gained the trust of the parish through its instruments and joined the service as a solemn obligation. Ushered in with cricket chirps, Afro-Brazilian candomblé drumming, an exotic bird call, a glissando of bells, and then a Graceland-era throwback guitar riff, “The Coast” follows a family of musicians that serendipitously communes at a church of St. The song’s production is ambitious, showing that Simon is not someone to rest on his laurels following his 1987 Grammy win for Album Of The Year. “The Coast” is a gem on an album that should be as loved by the culture as its predecessor, Graceland. Sure, he put out great music in the time after The Simpsons premiered its second season, but none of it is top-10 material. To me, the golden era of Paul Simon is roughly from 1966-1990, ending with his last true masterpiece, The Rhythm Of The Saints.
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Feel free to disagree (that’s what the comments are for), but remember, one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor. Summing up Paul Simon’s 14-album solo career in 10 tracks was as fun as it was painful.

His music is spiritual and it shines like a National guitar. He’s sophisticated, curious, and sanguine. His style in this era can best be described as numinous. His solo career came next, and has persisted - on and off - for nearly half a century. By the time they released swan song Bridge Over Troubled Water, in 1970, Simon had shed the world-weariness of his younger years and matured into an artist capable of anything. As the creative force behind the act, Simon wrote a number of all-timers and some sophomoric stuff that sounds like high school poetry. They broke up, got back together, and formed Simon & Garfunkel, the most successful musical duo of the 1960s. The two cut a track called “Hey, Little Schoolgirl,” an Everly Brothers rip-off that made them local celebs at their high school in Queens. Simon began his career as a teenage hitmaker with erstwhile partner Art Garfunkel. Today, after becoming one of the 20th century’s greatest songwriters, he turns 80. Fifty years ago, Paul Simon wondered how terribly strange he’d feel at 70.
