I'm sorry but Paul Simon is so overrated

Neither proud nor disgusted. Just havin' a discussion, Hovercraft.

I briefly considered buying a copy of Greatest Hits Etc today and thought of this thread, I passed though - already have two good LPs (the S/T and Still Crazy). He just seems more like an album artist to me.

At the national ILX karaoke, I will perform "America"

The Mississippi Delta
was shining like a national ILX karaoke

"well, but cohen's stuff are lyrics. because poetry is actually just song lyrics written down - which cohen really seems to get, this seems like a big part of what he's doing. it's not just poetry set to music; it takes flight in music; but it survives better on paper than simon's imo"

?!?
Everybody knows the plague is coming, but everybody knows the best lyric ever penned is "Everything you think and everything you feel is alright alright alright alright alright" or something similar, something that doesn't read well on the page but is completely The Best when sung. The music is the end, not the crib sheets. Have you ever heard Shakespeare set to song? Or Auden? Or Yeats? It is THE WORST. Leonard Cohen's greatest contribution to this world-- and it is substantial-- is his book of collected "lyrics", which read so well and fall so flat once sung.

You like "Story Of Isaac"? So do I; but it is the rarest example of Cohen bending a lyric to a melody, something he's failed to do on, say, "Hey, that's no way..." "Susanne" "So Long Marianne" "The Future" "Tower of song" "Everybody Knows" "Bird on a wire" "Ain't no cure for love" "Don't go home with..." "Sisters of mercy" "Coming back to you" "Famous blue raincoat" and seriously the man is, to me, just a trumped up Robert Ashley, and I love him, and I love Robert Ashley, but you cannot talk criticize a magician/dope like Paul Simon because his lyrics don't stack up to Cohen's poetry.

If we're talking about music, and I think we are, I'd say without hesitation that there are 10+ Paul Simon songs that *murder* the best L. Cohen song in its bed, without a fight; my champion is "I know what I know", fwiw.

I usually come in second to (to Dylan), and I don't like coming in second. ...One of my deficiencies is my voice sounds sincere. I've tried to sound ironic. I don't. I can't. Dylan, everything he sings has two meanings. He's telling you the truth and making fun of you at the same time. I sound sincere every time.

I like Simon, but this a dickish comment and I kind of disagree with it. I think his voice is pretty detached.

True!

simon is deeply ironic

yeah, it's not Dylan's irony that he can't match, it's Dylan's venom/anger

should he try?

No

Simon listens to himself and hears James Taylor

paul simon performed where i work a couple of years ago. i remember he was ultra-sensitive about a times piece that had been written about him at the time.

simon is deeply ironic

not really? on h&b and esp in the talking to strangers bit of graceland that max ref'd it's the emotional range of his voice that's so affecting. he's pretty good at "acting" in a way that Dylan isn't imo. he can muster anger and venom sure, but he can't match Simon for tenderness (for lack of a better word)

he is way too tender for me

most often i am moved by something that does not try too hard to be particularly tender

really? He's tender occasionally.

no tenderness beneath surm's honesty

should he try?

nah

this thread has made me love paul simon even more than i previously did btw

such a fan

compare Springsteen slap at home in "Born to Run" vs "My Little Town" (leavin' nothin' but the dead and dyin')

plax otm

NOTHIN' BUT THE DEAD AND DYIN' BACK IN MY LITTLE TOWN

that song hits a little close to home these days

Similar degrees of authorial distance there, right? I don't think either Simon or Springsteen actually hated their hometown.

My Little Town OK haven't heard that in 35 years. Awesome song. What the hell happened to him?

Still making good music?

I read some Playboy interview with Simon from the 1970s where he was asked who he most admired of current songwriters, and (as Bob Dylan and Randy Newman do) took a long, uncomfortable pause trying to some up with someone, and finally he says that likes Bob Seger. Which made me realize that "Little too call, could've used a few pounds" is a total Paul Simon song-opener, height aside.

(Jesus, I'm full of typos today.)

I have to fuckin raise that question myself when people ask me & I'm fuckin aching to big-up underrated songwriters but interviewers just do not ask questions like that any more, like, period

"when people ask me" = "when ppl interview me" I meant

I once heard a radio interview, with Peter Mulvey I think it was, where the interviewee answered questions and played his songs, but he also picked a song he most would like to have written, and they played a recording of it (it was S&G's "America)--really liked that they did that.

Hey, here is that interview--from 1984, it turns out.

I have a song on this new album called Train in the Distance. It's very factual about my life. What I discovered in writing recently is that facts, stated without color, are just potential energy. you don't know where they're going to go until you give them a direction. The song starts, "She was beautiful as Southern skies / The night he met her. She was married to someone." That's about Peggy, my first wife. And it's all true. Then it goes, "He was doggedly determined that he would get her/ He was old, he was young." That's me. I was, you know, pretending I was sophisticated. I wasn't . "From time to time, he'd tip his heart / But each time she withdrew." True, all true. All those are just facts. Then I add what is, I think, the artist's job : "Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance / Everybody thinks it's true." That's not fact anymore. That's comment. I told a story, and then I used the metaphor.

And then I thought, I don't think people are going to understand what I mean when I say, "Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance / Everybody thinks it's true. " And I don't want to be enigmatic. So I added : "What is the point of this story? What information pertains? / The thought that life could be better is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains." And what was my writer's point of view. That's we've survived by believing our life is going to get better. And I happened to use the train metaphor because I was sitting in a friend's house near a railway station, and I heard a train. And I said, "Oooh, that's nice." There's something about the sound of a train that's very romantic and nostalgic and hopeful. Anyway, I guess my point is that facts can be turned into art if one is artful enough.

I have to fuckin raise that question myself when people ask me & I'm fuckin aching to big-up underrated songwriters but interviewers just do not ask questions like that any more, like, period

gotta co-sign this, interviews are so fucking boring these days

great interview btw

that uh, Playboy one linked above

wow, I had to go away for a few days and I'm surprised to see all of the discussion that the thrown-off Cohen comment caused. But I think I can better clarify what I was getting at.

I think of Simon as coming from a Brill Building background, then moving into an interest in the folk revival, and his legacy sits kind of oddly between those two worlds. Post-Dylan, he clearly had ambitions to become Dylan's equal and I was using Cohen as an example of somebody who managed to build a somewhat underground career as a "serious" folk singer-songwriter in the Dylan mold. But Simon wrote all of these big catchy pop hits and beautiful sentimental ballads that make it difficult to separate his work from the world of Brill Building pop standards.

So which of his contemporaries would you compare him to? Neil Diamond and Billy Joel? Commercially, that makes sense, but his work seems a little more sophisticated, so in that context he would seem underrated. Nillson, Newman, Fred Neil, Van Dyke Parks? They all have had a touch of the overlooked-genius cred that Simon doesn't get, so compared to them he's underrated in a sense as well. James Taylor, Jackson Browne type singer-songwriters? They're a later generation, plus Simon towers over them imo. I don't see how he could be overrated compared to them.

And yeah, I realize the OP was a dumb troll thread, but I think it would be tough to seriously argue that Simon is overrated. Personally I don't get the love for most of the solo stuff beyond the hits, but it doesn't really seem that wildly overrated. Some people with really bad taste inexplicably dig it (joeking Simonites. put down your pitchforks) but pitchfork only ranked Graceland the 85th best album of the '80s so, you know.

He seems like one of those artists who's rated just exactly where he belongs.

I assure you, I am not a troll ... .

Even non-trolls can start troll threads. Any thread called "I'm sorry but (___________) is so overrated" is a troll thread, imo.

So Alamac, which of his contemporaries working in a similar vein do you think are underrated compared to Simon?

i assure you, i am not a troll... i just happen to live under a bridge over troubled waters.

I'm a mere collection of hearts and bones.

lol, estela, A++

alamac is a man of honor, of that i am certain

Please define troll thread, Hovercraft.

hell no, I'm busy reading the rest of the internet

Well wheelie king, that is a difficult question, I would certainly say that Leonard Cohen deserves more kudos and accolades than he got. Jorma Kaukonen as well. But I would also say that James Taylor is VASTLY overrated...

Leonard Cohen deserves more kudos and accolades than he got

Since he began touring again in 2008, I would say Cohen has received more ecstatic reviews and plaudits than just about any other artist from his era.

Well, ban this, hindsight is 20/20. But was he revered at the time of his heyday? I think not.

in Europe he's always been revered