The one musician “nobody comes close to”, according to Paul Simon
The heart of any good Paul Simon song comes from the melody behind everything.
There were plenty of dense stories that he could pack into every one of his songs, but the lion’s share of his material all came from sitting down at the guitar or piano and finding that one magical melody that made everyone want to sing along. Those catchy tunes may have come back to bite him in the ass when he had to sing them over and over again, but he was still happy to have tunes that could go down with some of the greatest American songwriters that the world had ever heard.
Then again, Simon took a much different approach to constructing his melodies than everyone else. Not every rock and roll singer was going to be pulling from people like Bach when they were looking for inspiration, but even when he dove into the classical tradition, Simon was still able to make tunes that sounded natural as pop songs, whether that was the main motif of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ or lifting entire melodies from symphonies on tracks like ‘American Tune’.
It’s easy to use those songs as a jumping-off point, but Simon was never coming up for lack of ability, either. Anyone who could write a tune like ‘The Sound of Silence’ clearly knows what they are doing, and when looking at some of the biggest tunes of his career, he could have managed to write pop symphonies the same way that Phil Spector could, only in his case he was using world musicians on records like Graceland.
A lot of those creative left turns came from Simon wanting to hear something new out of his own music, but it was also about trying to learn a new skill on every record. No songwriter becomes one of the greatest in the world by becoming stagnant, and when Simon wasn’t pulling from classical music, taking his cues from Bob Dylan, or working with musicians from the other side of the world, it didn’t hurt for him to see what was going on in the theatre world as well.
Not every rock and roller was going to consider Broadway to be cool by any stretch, but the stage was where the true professionals could hone their craft. Gershwin had written the kind of tunes that made the entire world want to sing along, but compared to every other playwright that was out at the time, no one seemed to touch Simon’s heart quite like Irving Berlin had done. Tin Pan Alley was the hub for songwriting legends, and Berlin was the peak of what every songwriter should aspire to in Simon’s book.
Others may have been great at arranging songs, but Simon felt that no one could ever manage to top what Berlin did for American music, saying, “Early fifties music had a different kind of melody, more melodic. But then you’re closer to the age of melody. Because the big band era and post-war, what was still all about melody. The days of Irving Berlin and all those great songwriters were about melody. Nobody comes close to writing melodies like they did. Nobody.”
But it takes the right singer to bring a lot of those songs to life as well. Berlin never was going to claim to be the greatest singer in the world when he penned many of his classics but when you listen to someone like Ray Charles interpret his material, it’s impossible to think that anyone could do a better version of a tune like ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’. But just because Berlin amassed so many hits doesn’t mean that he was naturally gifted before he even played a note.
It was hard work trying to reach that level of songwriting genius, and Simon was going to do whatever he could to make the same tunes that made people’s hearts dance the same way that those melodies did. It wasn’t going to be a walk in the park, but given how many times Simon stretched himself, he was willing to put in the work the same way that people like Berlin had done.
