Line #49 Music/PaulSimon


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4	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/paul_simon_1.png]]
5
6	->''If you'll be my bodyguard,\
7	I can be your long-lost pal.\
8	I can call you Betty,\
9	And Betty, when you call me you can call me Al.''
10	-->-- "You Can Call Me Al"
11
12	Paul Frederic Simon (born October 13, 1941) is an American folk and rock musician known both for his initial career in the FolkRock duo Music/SimonAndGarfunkel and his eclectic solo career, which has ranged from straightforward pop, rock and folk to world music explorations.
13
14	Raised in [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity Queens, New York]], Simon first began performing with his school chum Art {{Garfunkel}} in 1957 under the name Tom and Jerry (even having a minor chart hit that year with their single "Hey Schoolgirl"), but the partnership only became permanent following the success of their 1965 chart-topper and SignatureSong "The Sounds of Silence". The duo released a string of critically acclaimed albums and became famous for their close harmonies and Simon's alternately surreal, poetic and humorous lyrics, before calling it a day in 1970.
15
16	Simon quickly moved on to a solo career, releasing the eponymous ''Paul Simon'' in 1972. For the rest of TheSeventies, Simon pursued a jazz-pop sound with occasional elements from other genres such as gospel ("Loves Me Like a Rock") and reggae ("Mother and Child Reunion"). While his first three albums were greeted warmly by the record-buying public and critics, he went on a hiatus after 1976, dabbling with acting for a while. His supposed "comeback" records between 1980-1986 saw him abandoning his jazzy sound in favour of more experimentation and sold poorly.
17
18	However, Simon rebounded with ''Music/{{Graceland}}'' (1986). Recorded in UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica with a cast of talented African musicians and containing a fusion of Western pop-rock and folk music with African genres such as isicathamiya and mbaqanga, the album was released in 1986 to a wildly positive response despite considerable controversy surrounding Simon's decision to record in South Africa at the height of both Apartheid and a United Nations-led cultural boycott against South Africa meant to protest Apartheid. The album re-established Simon as a successful artist and became an enduring benchmark by which "world music" experiments by other pop artists are measured, though the ''Graceland'' controversy still chases him around here and there even today.
19
20	Away from the music world, Simon is a member of the ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' Five-Timer's Club (even appearing in the original titular sketch). His memorable music video for "You Can Call Me Al" features Creator/ChevyChase.
21
22	----
23	!!Studio Discography:
24	* ''The Paul Simon Songbook'' (1965)
25	* ''Paul Simon'' (1972)
26	* ''There Goes Rhymin' Simon'' (1973)
27	* ''Still Crazy After All These Years'' (1975)
28	* ''One-Trick Pony'' (1980)
29	* ''Hearts and Bones'' (1983)
30	* ''Music/{{Graceland}}'' (1986)
31	* ''The Rhythm of the Saints'' (1990)
32	* ''Songs from the Capeman'' (1997)
33	* ''You're the One'' (2000)
34	* ''Surprise'' (2006)
35	* ''So Beautiful or So What'' (2011)
36	* ''Stranger to Stranger'' (2016)
37	* ''In the Blue Light'' (2018)
38	* ''Seven Psalms'' (2023)
39	----
40	!!"You Can Call Me Tropes":
41
42	* AlbumTitleDrop: From "Everything About It is a Love Song"
43	-->''At a birthday party''
44	-->''Make a wish and close your eyes.''
45	-->'''''Surprise''', surprise, surprise.''
46	* AmericanTitle: "American Tune".
47	* BornInTheWrongCentury: Inverted and defied by "Born At the Right Time".
48	* CallBack: The line about "The little harbor church of St. Cecilia" in "The Coast" might be one to Music/SimonAndGarfunkel's "Cecilia".
49	* ComingOfAgeStory: "Duncan" is largely this, complete with dose of SexAsRiteOfPassage towards the end.
50	* ConceptAlbum: ''Graceland''.
51	* CultureClash: All the questions in "How Can You Live in the Northeast?" point to one.
52	* EitherOrTitle: "The Myth of Fingerprints, or, All Around the World".
53	* FathersQuest: Simon recorded "Slip Slidin' Away" in 1977. The third stanza describes a father who's been absent from his son's life, and decides to make amends.
54	-->''And I know a father who had a son\
55	He longed to tell him all the reasons for the things he'd done\
56	He came a long way just to explain\
57	Kissed his boy as he lay sleeping, then turned around and headed home again.''
58	* LyricalDissonance:
59	** "Boy In The Bubble" - in Simon's own words, "Hope and dread... that's the way I see the world — a balance between the two, but coming down on the side of hope."
60	** Also from Graceland - "That Was Your Mother" - The upbeat zydeco music disguises the fact that the lyrics are basically a father complaining to their child that he and his mother don't have much fun since he was born.
61	** "Mother and Child Reunion" - An upbeat, reggae-flavored song about a father trying to console a child about the death of the mother.
62	** "You Can Call Me Al", despite its upbeat melody is about a middle-aged man having a mid-life crisis, questioning why he's "soft in the middle", his short attention span and losing respect in an idol who "ducked back down the alley with some roly-poly little bat-faced girl", although in the third verse it's implied he gets over said crisis and finds a resolve in South Africa.
63	* NoodleIncident: Not even Simon knows what Mama saw in "Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard".
64	* NonActorVehicle: 1980's ''One Trick Pony'', which he wrote as well as starred in and composed the music for. Interesting since his character is explicitly not an AuthorAvatar; he's a OneHitWonder from TheSixties struggling to make a comeback. It famously has a character (played by Creator/RipTorn) who's a blatant TakeThat to Creator/ColumbiaRecords president Walter Yetnikoff (whose feuding with Simon led to him switch labels), among other [[InJoke In-Jokes]] about the music industry. The movie completely bombed, but it generated a hit song with "Late in the Evening".
65	* PerformanceVideo: "You Can Call Me Al" is a parody of this, with Chevy Chase lip-syncing the lyrics while Simon plays various instruments.
66	* RightThroughTheWall: Alluded to in "Duncan".
67	* RuleOfThree: "The Late Great Johnny Ace" features three Johns: Ace, Kennedy and Lennon.
68	* SelfTitledAlbum: Simon's 1970 album.
69	* SesquipedalianLoquaciousness: "A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert [=McNamara=]'d Into Submission)"
70	** From "You Can Call Me Al": "All along along/There were incidents and accidents/There were hints and allegations"
71	** "The Dangling Conversation".
72	* ShoutOut:
73	** "Old", from ''You're The One''. It not only name drops Buddy Holly, but is very reminiscent of Holly's guitar riffs.
74	** The zydeco song "That Was Your Mother":
75	---> Clifton Chenier, the King of the Bayou
76	---> Standing in the shadow of Clifton Chenier
77	** "The Late Great Johnny Ace", from ''Hearts and Bones'', is at once a Shout Out to Johnny Ace, UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy and in memorial to Music/JohnLennon -- three Johns who were killed by a firearm.
78	** "Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog after the War" shouts out the [[Creator/ReneMagritte famed surrealist painter]] as well as the popular doo-wop groups of TheFifties: The Penguins, The Moonglows, The Orioles and the Five Satins.
79	** "Mother and Child Reunion", besides homaging {{Reggae}} (the music of Jimmy Cliff in particular), has these lines.
80	--->Oh, little darling of mine\
81	I can't for the life of me\
82	Remember a sadder day\
83	I know they say [[Music/LetItBe "let it be."]]
84	* SignatureStyle: Lyrically, at least.
85	* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: Started cynical-ish, especially on early Music/SimonAndGarfunkel records, but he's always had a foot in idealism.
86	* ToAbsentFriends: Combined with DrowningMySorrows at the end of "The Late Great Johnny Ace".
87	* TropeCodifier: He was one of the first to succeed at bringing world music to mainstream America's attention, preceded by Music/TheBeatles experimenting with Indian music on ''Music/RubberSoul'' and ''Music/{{Revolver\|Beatles Album}}''.
88	* TruckDriversGearChange: Done in the middle of the last verse of "Still Crazy After All These Years".
89	* UptownGirl: "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" from ''Graceland'' is ''explicitly'' about this trope.
90	* WordSaladLyrics: "Boy In The Bubble" borders on this.
91	* WorldMusic: His experiments in this date back to the Simon & Garfunkel days (most memorably "El Condor Pasa", where he wrote English lyrics to a Peruvian song), and he dipped into it occasionally in his earlier solo career, using Latin rhythms in songs like "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" and "Late in the Evening". But he embraced the concept wholeheartedly with the exploration of South African music on ''Graceland'', and continued it on his next album, ''The Rhythm of the Saints'', with Brazilian music as its focus.

Context Music / PaulSimon