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A few years back, I wrote an essay on Paul Simon’s career for the Toronto Star. The occasion was Alex Gibney’s 2023 documentary In Restless Dreams, which — in addition to being very well done — seemed like a wonderful excuse to spend a week digging as deeply as I could into Simon and his work.
Simon, incidentally, turned 85 this week, which similarly seemed like a good excuse to bump the essay that resulted. The process of researching and writing it, among other things, really impressed on me what an incredible melange of sounds and styles Simon has channeled through his music. In addition to being one of our finest popular songwriters, he is a quintessentially American syncretist is the best sense: an artist who, as I put it in the piece, excels in working at the intersection of different genres and styles and discovering points of agreement between them.
Anyway, here’s a link to the essay on the Star’s website and an archived link in case for those unable to read it at the first one. Finally, here’s Simon’s 1983 track “René and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog after the War” — which I include because I think it might be the best melody he’s ever written (particularly in the bridge section) — and the original, stripped down version of him and Art Garfunkel performing The Sound of Silence (which often gets tragically overshadowed by the better known recording from 1966). In any case, enjoy.
-Luke