Best Songwriters – #1 – Paul Simon

I flirted with putting Bob Dylan, Ben Folds and Elvis Costello in my #1 spot, but I kept coming back to Paul Simon, the most unassuming of them all. I’ll get to my reasons in a minute.

First, I’d like to reference some of the artists I left off this list, artists who made the initial cut but didn’t quite survive.

Lucinda Williams and Lyle Lovett, two southern stalwarts, are basically tied for 11th place, and either could have cracked the top ten but for my soft spot for Billy Joel. Bruce Springsteen is a legend who, like Bob Dylan, has gotten better with age. Tom Petty is considered the poor man’s Springsteen, but he’s plenty rich for me.

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Paul Simon’s slump continued with the release of 1983’s Hearts and Bones. This album, though, was undeserving of its tepid commercial and critical reception. It contains some of Simon’s very best work, in my estimation.

It also contains ‘Cars are Cars,’ which could well be his very worst work, but let’s not hold that against him. I think one ‘Train in the Distance’ is worth a handful of ‘Cars are Cars,’ no question.

Hearts and Bones also features two songs called ‘Think Too Much’ (versions ‘A’ and ‘B’), the latter (which actually shows up first in the tracklist) is a beautiful little island ditty about a dying love affair.

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