From Kathy to Carla: The unexpected influence of Simon and Garfunkel on Harry Styles’ new album
Of all the influences you might expect Harry Styles to have, is Simon and Garfunkel the first one that would instantly spring to mind?
Sure, he’s cited a shedload of new inspirations over the course of the press tour for his new album Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally. LCD Soundsystem, Four Tet, The XX, and The Durutti Column are just some of the examples; wide-ranging but perhaps not all that unexpected given he has found this fresh sonic foray into the funkadelic synth-pop landscape.
But if there’s one thing that Simon and Garfunkel definitely aren’t, it’s funkadelic synth-pop. In this sense, it might have been surprising to some to hear Styles cite the duo not once but multiple times in his sit-down deep-dive into the album with Zane Lowe. If it was a record full of folkish ballads, you might see the vision, but ‘Aperture’ onwards isn’t that.
While it’s not out of the realm of possibility to see Paul Simon cutting it up in a club, it probably bears saying that Styles’ allusions to the musician and his partner Art Garfunkel aren’t necessarily in the sonic sense. Yet the deeper one dives, you’ll find that the course of Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally is littered with lyrical references to America’s greatest songwriting pair.
Seasoned music heads might roll their eyes and see this as another flagrant example of a kid cashing in on a classic. But Styles himself is now 32 years old – slightly older now than the duo in their heyday – and his 16-year career climbing in the music business proves that he has more than enough skin in the game. His references aren’t just imitations, but truly reverential.
To start in the most obvious place is actually to skip straight to the final track on Styles’ latest album, as ‘Carla’s Song’ stands as the most important and overt nod to Simon and Garfunkel that he makes. He recalled the story of a friend named Carla, who had just discovered Simon but never heard ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’. So he played it for her.
“Watching her listen to it, having never heard that song, felt like I was just watching someone see in technicolour or discover magic,” Styles explained. “There was something in that moment that reminded me, by making music, what you’re investing in. It’s songs that go so beyond our lifetime.”
It was enough of an ethereal experience to spark the singer into his songwriting mode, with his ode to Carla transpiring into ‘Carla’s Song’: a nod to Simon and Garfunkel’s 1966 lamentation to Simon’s former lover in ‘Kathy’s Song’. Yet in dissecting Styles’ lyrics, which open in “There is a bridge that leads to troubled water” and end in “It’s all waiting there for you,” he evokes the feeling that the possibilities for sonic discovery are endless.
In that sense, Styles continues to practice what he preaches on Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally as, as even with the aptly disco romp of the song ‘Dance No More’, the sonic threads of the classic duo remain ever-present. The song’s spangly and off-the-cuff riff, the pop star claimed, was inspired by a similar scenario that went into making the heart of Simon’s ‘You Can Call Me Al’.
On top of that, the lyrics in the chorus of ‘Dance No More’, with “keep your customer satisfied/ and live your life,” represent a striking, if not exactly subtle, resemblance to Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Keep the Customer Satisfied’ from Bridge Over Troubled Water. Everything about the series of references is layered and linked, but only if you search to find them.
Styles’ new album is one that has come to symbolise an entirely new sonic direction for the singer, a far cry from his boyband days that began scarily close to two decades ago now. Yet anyone who still believes he is stuck in the fold of squeaky clean images and bubblegum pop is not only woefully wrong but, frankly, snobbish.
It’s a fact that many won’t want to hear, but it remains the case that Styles is perhaps single-handedly one of the most exciting voices in pop right now. He possesses a unique compass of mass appeal that also bridges into classic and perhaps unsuspecting directions, proven by his unique Venn diagram between LCD Soundsystem and Simon and Garfunkel here.
The varied and often metatextural references to the duo, as well as others, across the span of Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally is testament to that, giving salience to the argument that clever and truly fascinating pop music has always existed, so long as the audience gives it its deserved time of day.
Of course, there is no illusion that Styles is about to convert a legion of Simon and Garfunkel fans, mainly in their 70s and 80s, down into the front of the pit at his Wembley Stadium residence this summer. Yet if there’s anything that his latest set of sonic allusions proves, it’s that pop stars should never be read by their covers.
