The forgotten song that Paul Simon called “perfect”
The entire Paul Simon songbook is practically a beginner’s guide to how to write a great song.
Simon was never interested in making by-the-numbers pop tunes every time he broke out the acoustic guitar, and listening back to every one of his records, it’s hard to picture any of the tunes being any more complete than what actually ended up on the record. The folk-rock icon always had a clear vision for what he wanted his albums to sound like, but he was also a bit wary of when some of his idols were given the shaft.
And listening to all of Simon and Garfunkel’s early material, Simon already knew a thing or two about not getting treated properly in the record industry. ‘The Sound of Silence’ may have been one of the greatest songs that he or most people would ever write that decade, but judging by the fact that the record label took the song out of storage and stuck a rock and roll band over top of it wasn’t exactly going to sit well with him, either.
He knew that he and Art Garfunkel were far from the folk-rock movement that Bob Dylan helped kick into motion, and even if they did have great tunes, they weren’t going to get away with having any sense of swagger. Simon knew he wasn’t that kind of artist, but that didn’t stop him from taking a few cues from acts that did have a fair sense of soul to them every now and again.
Keep in mind that when Simon was growing up, radio wasn’t the homogenised version that most of us know today. Whereas everything is dictated by playlists today, Simon got a helping of everything from folk to blues to soul to the early incarnation of rock and roll as a kid, and all of it went into making his own songs sound great. But out of all his inspirations, he knew that The Moonglows deserved a much better fate than what they got.
The band itself were a fine soul group when they released tunes like ‘Sincerely’, but out of all the potential that they had, Simon couldn’t help but feel sad when they ended up getting screwed over, saying, “It’s true that the McGuire Sisters’ version went to number one instead of the Moonglows, siphoning off some of the glory and Alan Freed took writing credit on some of the songs, siphoning off some of the royalties. Life isn’t fair. We just shrug and say that’s the way it is. Nothing’s perfect, but to me, ‘Sincerely’ by the Moonglows is perfect.”
And unfortunately, it’s not like that was a new phenomenon, either. Even when Elvis Presley started to quickly become one of the biggest acts in modern music, people like Dolly Parton rejected the idea of him recording a version of ‘I Will Always Love You’ after she got a message from his management saying that Presley would be taking a writer’s credit on the song if he decided to sing it.
But maybe that was what gave Simon a little bit more of a keen eye on what he was doing. His songs had the power to really have an effect on people, and he wasn’t going to watch them be changed in any way, which probably explains why he and Garfunkel had so many disagreements when it came to getting the last tracks of Bridge Over Troubled Water finished in 1970.
It is unfair seeing many of the greatest acts fall by the wayside right as their career is taking off, but it’s always the keen listeners that will continue to spread their love of the true originals. The McGuire Sisters may have had a perfectly acceptable version of the tune, but in the same way that Pat Boone tried his hand at singing Little Richard’s ‘Tutti Frutti’, no one was ever going to mistake the cheap imitation for the original.
