Continuing a countdown of my favorite albums of 1976…
Oops.
I’ve made the mistake a few times in the Decades series of trusting an online source for the release dates of certain albums. Usually I catch it in time and adjust my posts accordingly before anybody knows any different.
Not this time. I failed to double-check the date of the album I had slated as my #2 of 1976 — Paul Simon’s Still Crazy After All These Years.
Continuing my look at 1975, first by counting down my own top albums of that year.
#4 – Paul Simon – Still Crazy After All These Years
Paul Simon’s fourth solo album, and third since the breakup of Simon & Garfunkel, was the highpoint of the 15 years following the duo’s split.
Coming on the heels of 1973’s excellent There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, Still Crazy gave Simon his first (and only) #1 album as a soloist and produced two of his most enduring classics: the title track and ’50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.’
‘Night Game’ is an odd and borderline silly song from the otherwise great 1975 Paul Simon album Still Crazy After All These Years.
This track recounts a baseball game during which the pitcher drops dead at a pivotal moment. I guess it’s about the triviality of things like sports in the face of mortality, probably as a metaphor for a lot of other things. But the seriousness of the delivery and the dirgelike music just make it kind of funny.
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.
For one of the 70s’ touchstone albums, Paul Simon’s Still Crazy After All These Years is a rather low-key affair. It runs for just ten songs and under 40 minutes and every song has a similar laid-back vibe.
Even the album’s #1 hit, ’50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,’ drifts by on a silky, mellow groove. This is an album made for a lazy Sunday morning.
Meet Me In Montauk 