Today’s random SOTD comes from Paul Simon’s wonderful 2011 album So Beautiful Or So What.
‘Questions For the Angels’ is the quietest and probably the least ambitious song on the album, and it’s a safe bet that it’s the first song to feature both Jay-Z and a crying zebra.
Actually, Kanye West probably got there first.
My next ‘Folk Rock Derivative’ artist is both a perfect example of the genre and an argument for scrapping the concept of musical categorization altogether.
Nobody can argue that Paul Simon isn’t a folk rock artist — the man practically invented the genre when paired with Art Garfunkel in the 60s. But he has since explored so many different styles — from gospel and jazz to a few continents worth of world music — that one could be a huge Paul Simon fan and have no affinity for folk rock whatsoever.
All of the drama and anticipation of the last four weeks leads to this… the least surprising “Best 80s Album” pick of the batch. Sorry to be boring and predictable, but what choice did I have?
I considered ranking Graceland second just to up the excitement factor, but I couldn’t do it in good conscience. It’s too perfect, too ground-breaking, too emotionally and viscerally satisfying to deny. The only thing going against it is that it’s been the best! album! ever! for more than 25 years. At some point, shouldn’t Graceland fatigue set in?
I’ve written several times that I consider Paul Simon’s most recent album, last year’s So Beautiful Or So What, one of his best ever — an equal of The Rhythm of the Saints and withing shouting distance of Graceland.
That’s certainly high praise, the sort of thing that is sometimes said during the blush of excitement that accompanies a new album release. Months later you’ll return to the same record and enjoy it but not to the degree you’d advertised.
With this album, however, that hasn’t been the case.
Closing out my Paul Simon Weekends is another song from the excellent So Beautiful Or So What. ‘Love and Blessings’ is the album’s penultimate track and one that crept up on me, going initially unnoticed before emerging as one of my favorites.
I was working in the yard one day, listening to the album on headphones, when a line toward the end of this song struck me: “Maple trees just a little but duller than the memory of the year before.”
