The singer Paul Simon called a gift to the world: “This incredible voice”
Paul Simon, one of the most influential songwriters and a voice of remarkable delicacy, has crafted songs that have defined key moments across multiple eras. By the 1980s, he had already established himself as a timeless figure, first as part of the iconic duo Simon and Garfunkel and later as a solo artist, leaving an indelible mark on the music of the previous two decades.
Songs like ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ and ‘Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard’ introduced the world to narrative tapestries told by a familiar whisper on intricate melodies. From the outset of his career, he earned the right to creative freedom—‘Sounds of Silence’, opening the first Simon and Garfunkel album, is an experimental stall to set out, and its radio success laid a pretty open path for Simon thereafter.
Widely regarded as his magnum opus, his 1986 record Graceland saw Simon revisit his experimental roots, blending his folk sensibilities with world music influences. Upon hearing a bootlegged tape of mbaqanga, black street music from Johannesburg in 1985, Simon spent the next year weaving this influential moment into his next record. A record that paired the lyrical tropes of Americana music with the deeply instrumental sections of African music, thanks to features from Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the Boyoyo Boys.
During an interview with The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Simon claims the record’s title track ‘Graceland’ is “the true hybrid of South African music and American. More so than Diamonds On The Soles of Her Shoes or You Can Call Me Al”.
While it may platform what Simon considers a hybrid of genres, it still features the album’s finest vocal hook, which feels like a crystallisation of the record’s wider personal quest for answers. The story follows Simon to Memphis, Tennessee—better known in the music world as Graceland.
He continued by saying: “I kept singing ‘I’m going to Graceland,’ and every time I’d sing it I’d think well I’m not going to keep that,” the artist said of the lyrics’ origins, adding his intentions to replace the chorus once something better came to mind. “This is not going to be a song about Elvis Presley.”
But it was something that later felt like a creative instinct he couldn’t shake, saying, “I thought, Gee, I can’t get this out of my head,” he said. “I better go down Graceland and see if there’s something that this song is telling me I should investigate by going there.”
What was born was one of the 20th century’s most iconic songs, with lyrics that drift between visual storytelling and existential questioning of a life in between destinations. Later, during a 1987 interview with Spin, Simon said: “Just as in the song, the journey was more interesting than the destination”.
Although it was only a year after its release when I gave that quote, it’s clear that the song’s catharsis was immediately apparent. But ultimately, on a trip so led by a spiritual instinct, the destination must have played some part in contextualising the journey. He continued in the interview by saying, “But Graceland itself was just a business. Big parking lots, you buy your ticket, get on a bus, and wait in line. There’s a tour, guides, and they take you through the house and show you Elvis’s this and Elvis’s that”.
He added: “Even though it’s so commercial, you could even feel it offensive to your taste—and then, on the plaque on Presley’s grave, it says he was given the gift of this incredible voice that has touched millions of people all around the world. And that’s just what it is. A gift”.
Visiting the memory of a man whose artistic identity was so deeply defined by public perception, Simon’s visit to Graceland and Elvis can only have given clarity to a record dealing with similar internal dialogues.
