“A man walks down the street/ He says, ‘Why am I soft in the middle now?’” An experience that many sixties icons probably had in the eighties. Suddenly they were “soft in the middle” and asked themselves how this could have happened. It’s strange, however, that Paul Simon of all people actually asked this question, because, unlike his contemporaries, he had always been soft. Which is probably the reason why he survived the eighties so brilliantly, unlike his contemporaries.
Because during that decade for Dylan et al. Generally considered a no-man’s land, Simon naturally made his most popular, sensationally successful album with “Graceland”. He succeeded in this feat not least because his natural tendency towards something musically light, soft and at the same time complex harmonized wonderfully with the production standards of the eighties.
For example, while the gated reverb effects on the drums on, say, “Empire Burlesque” sounded like half-hearted concessions to the zeitgeist, on “Graceland” they were compelling, especially since Simon was drawing from musical styles that had that smooth, sparkling sound from the beginning as an essential characteristic. No album is as easy and as difficult to love as “Graceland”. “Talent borrows, genius steals,” says TS Eliot, and there is no question that Paul Simon is a genius.
Paul Simon knew exactly what he wanted
His effortless melodies have the lightness of a friendly conversation, his lyrics are witty, concrete and artful. Added to this is his taste as a curator, as a formative mastermind through which all influences are filtered. With “Graceland” he was no longer a songwriter in the classic sense, but rather he built his songs from recordings of jams that he had recorded in South Africa. Hours and hours of raw material that he later put together into tracks that he then sang over.
The fact that he often denied his fellow South African musicians the credits they deserved gives this impeccable album a bitter edge that stands in ironic contrast to his sweet sounds. On the 25th Anniversary Edition you can hear an alternative version of “Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes”, reduced to Simon’s vocals, the backing choirs and Bakithi Kumalo’s bass. How inventive and crazy these bass lines are! How much the album version is carried by them too! Simon himself described them as “magical” and “impossible to play”. Kumalo didn’t get a credit as a songwriter.
More favorite albums from the 80s
Perhaps Simon’s decision to call the album “Graceland” also speaks to how aware he was of the inequality at the heart of this album. But much like Elvis Presley, who both appropriated black music and became rich through it and helped black artists gain greater attention, Simon’s mix of styles expanded the vocabulary of Western pop music and created something excitingly new.