#15 – Paul Simon – So Beautiful Or So What
Continuing my countdown of the best albums of the decade so far, I arrive at Paul Simon’s 2011 comeback record, So Beautiful Or So What.
Simon released only two album in the 00’s: You’re the One in 2000 and Surprise in 2006. The former was half-great and the latter a general disappointment. Before those records, it’s just 1997’s Broadway experiment Songs from the Capeman and the sublime Rhythm of the Saints way back in 1990.
Not very prolific, Mr. Simon.
But 21 years and three so-so records after Rhythm of the Saints, Simon finally released an album worthy of being in the same conversation as that album and Graceland.
So Beautiful Or So What is alternately expansive and intimate, a reflection on love, life and mortality by the 70-year-old Simon. It features the same world music elements that revitalized his work in the 80s but emotionally feels much closer to home.
Given Simon’s snail’s pace when it comes to record releases, this may well be his last album. If so, it’s a gorgeous and fitting swan song for one of popular music’s greatest songwriters.
Free from the shackles of time
Evil is darkness, sight without sight
A demon that feeds on the mind
How’d it all begin? Started with a bang
Couple of light years later, stars and planets sang
Fire warmed the cold, waves of colors flew
Moonlight into gold, earth to green and blue
Love is eternal sacred light
Free from the shackles of time
Evil is darkness, sight without sight
A demon that feeds on the mind
Earth becomes a farm
Farmer takes a wife
Wife becomes a river and the giver of life
Man becomes machine
Oil runs down his face
Machine becomes a man with a bomb in the marketplace
Bomb in the marketplace, bomb in the marketplace
Love is eternal sacred light
Free from the shackles of time
Evil is darkness, sight without sight
A demon that feeds on the mind
Big Bang
That’s a joke that I made up
Once when I had eons to kill
You know, most folks
They don’t get when I’m joking
Well, maybe someday they will
Love me
Love me
That’s the main request I receive
Well you know I love all my children
And it tears me up when I leave
But sometimes you gotta fly down that highway
Free as a bird, knock on wood, thank the Lord
I am driving along in my automobile
It’s a brand new pre-owned ’96 Ford
Check out the radio, pop music station
That don’t sound like my music to me
Talk show host, what’s that boy’s name?
Politics is ugly
At the end of the dial there’s the gospel show
Maybe now I can exit and rest
There’s a blizzard rolling down off the banks of Lake Michigan
Gonna cover the roads of the icy Midwest
Love is eternal sacred light
Free from the shackles of time
Evil is darkness, sight without sight
A demon that feeds all the mind
Love is eternal sacred light
Love is eternal sacred light
Love is eternal sacred light
Meet Me In Montauk 
I can’t really begrudge the man for slowing down his album production, but I hope he has a few more records left in him, particularly if they are at this level of quality.
Love this album and all the rest. He is the best!
I’m working backwards through your blog – these are the best albums of the DECADE?!?!? Sheesh, it hasn’t been a very good decade, has it? Oh my.