“I wasn’t very happy”: The song Paul Simon can no longer relate to
Living is a lonely experience. While we are constantly surrounded by loved ones and fill our lives with people we can speak to and spend time with, our thoughts, the mundane ones about how much milk we put in a tea, all the way to those that question our mortality, are done internally, in isolation. As a result, when something comes along that appeals to us on a personal level and connects with that internal monologue, we hold onto it. Enter the music of people like Paul Simon.
You don’t need to look far to find examples of Paul Simon being one of the best songwriters in recent decades. From a young age, he was penning lyrics and melodies that appealed to people far and wide, touching upon different emotions ranging from simple to profound. He gave people something they could connect with, and his legacy as a songwriter remains.
The reason that music resonates with us so much is because of how internal our emotions are. Even if you’re comfortable opening up about how you’re feeling, when you experience those feelings, you do so in your own mind, which can be lonely. As such, when you hear a song that lets you know you’re not alone in those feelings and that beautifully acknowledges them, it’s unsurprising it begins to mean so much to you.
Musicians often view their art in a similar light. While there will no doubt be a desire to be commercially successful, especially when it’s an artist’s primary source of income, they also use music as emotional support. They write about how they are feeling, their struggles, and whatever hardships might be plaguing them at that moment. As a result, music is more than just a piece of art; it’s a window into the past, giving us insight into how an artist was feeling at a particular moment.
Subsequently, there are some songs that, years down the line, regardless of how successful they might have been, artists can no longer relate to. One of these is Paul Simon’s ‘Still Crazy After All These Years’, one of his earlier tracks when embarking on his solo career.
The song is one of his most intricate, with chord sequences that are hard to keep up with. It is heavily inspired by jazz but planted inside a folk setting. Meanwhile, the lyrics are introspective, dark, and explorative, resonant with a period of uncertainty during Simon’s life that he no longer recognises.
“It’s very helpful to start with something that’s true; if you start with something that’s false, you’re always covering your tracks,” said Simon when discussing the origin of a song, “Something simple and true that has a lot of possibilities is a nice way to begin.”
Talking about ‘Still Crazy’ in particular, he said, “I remember well coming up with the first line of the song. I was stepping into a shower when the thought came to me, and I wasn’t very happy about it either. I didn’t say, ‘Oh, that’s clever, that’s a good one, I can use that’,” he reflected, “It was, at the time, an assessment of where I was at in terms of my life. And I wasn’t very happy that that was my assessment, but I soon turned it into a song.”
Although the song represents emotions that Simon no longer feels, he doesn’t regret writing it. He admits that songwriting has always been the best way to deal with challenging periods. “That’s what you do with those things, and that makes it something else,” he said, “In fact, now it has almost no relevance on a personal level to me. That was a long time ago. I’ve long since stopped feeling that way. I probably wouldn’t describe myself that way. I probably wouldn’t think that way at all.”
