The best melody writer Paul Simon had ever seen: “The greatest of my generation”
The heart of any great Paul Simon song wasn’t coming from him trying to write the ultimate pop song.
He wanted to reflect the times in the same way that his idols did, and even if he had a natural ear for melody when writing his tunes, he wasn’t going to forget all of those Everly Brothers songs that he listened to as a kid, which taught him how to sing harmony. He was more than happy to keep things rolling in whatever way that he knew how, but there were other songwriters who left him dumbfounded with how much ground they could cover in just a few lines.
Simon was willing to put in the same amount of work as everyone he was hearing, but he also understood that there was no sense in competing with his idols. Bob Dylan was always going to be the most clever wordsmith that the world had ever heard, and even if Simon had tried his best to make the most sardonic song that he could think of, he was always going to end up sounding way too sincere compared to everyone else whenever he sang one of his tunes.
That’s just his tone of voice whenever he picked up the microphone, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t still a market for those kinds of tunes. The entire pop song format that he worked in went all the way back to the days of Tin Pan Alley, and when you listen to a lot of his melodies, a lot of them tend to have the same kind of construction that you would find in some of the classic pop songs from the pre-rock and roll days.
But even for someone who encapsulated the American song better than anyone else, Simon felt that no one covered as much ground as The Beatles did. Their performance on The Ed Sullivan Show alone would have been enough to put them in musical history forever, but Simon knew that there were bits and pieces of the Fab Four that were much better than others in his mind. He didn’t feel the same affinity for all of John Lennon’s solo work, but he could still see the merit in the other songwriters in the group.
Because, really, how can anyone not love what Paul McCartney has brought to the music world over the years? There are more than a few times when he has made tunes that are a bit too saccharine for the rest of the world, but when looking at his track record, no one has been able to make decent to great songs on every album for as long as he has and still be viable to a pop audience.
Rock and roll was never meant to be looked at as sophisticated, but Simon felt that Macca deserved a place next to Rodgers and Hammerstein when talking about the greatest songwriters ever, saying, “I think Gershwin has to be in there. Rodgers is in there. Hank Williams certainly belongs there. I think out of my generation, there were a few that were exceptional, but the great melody writer of my generation in his youth was Paul McCartney.”
For all of the lip service that he paid to McCartney, it’s strange to think that Simon had one of the closest relationships with George Harrison. Harrison was always the more soft-spoken Beatle, but when he talked, the entire world listened, and when looking at his performance with Simon playing ‘Homeward Bound’, it’s still one of the greatest unlikely collaborations that happened throughout the 1970s.
Other artists certainly belong up there with what McCartney has done, but the fact that he has made some of the most well-known songs of anybody is a testament to the kind of muse that he followed throughout his whole career. He was the one writing the tunes that made the world fall in love; not bad for a guy who claims that he can barely read rudimentary sheet music.
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