PAUL SIMON POLL RESULTS THREAD AND DISCUSSION

We will all fall into Graceland...

'Cecilia' is probably a novelty song, but it's joyful, funny and crackles with life. Which most novelty songs aren't.

lol, i TOLD yuz "cecilia" was top 10

it's not just some tossed-off pop tune, either, it's 2:55 of compressed human joy, delivered straight

it is "people who seem to have figured out how to live" in musical form

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee366/lamp11/05America.png
#05 AMERICA
1968 (album)/1971 (promo b-side)/1972 (single)
459 points/21 votes/2 #1 votes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W773ZPJhcVw

so Only Living Boy is gonna be number 1 then

I have no idea why I left "America" off my ballot. Helluva tune.

sounds like a museum iirc

That was it!

Actually, I bumped it off so I could vote for childhood favorite "The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine"

kinda figured that was gonna win, seems like the song you'd put in the paul simon time capsule

I like Bowie's version of "America."

"America" is so good, the swell of "counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike" is no museum piece.

Okay, America - it didn't grab me on my run through the catalogue so I set it aside. I was surprised to see you all putting it down as a lock.

Listened there again and reassessed a little. It's beautiful, but complicated - I feel like I'd need to spend a lot of time with it to appreciate it properly, like there are links and resonances where I'm not making the connections. What it reminds me most of is Surf's Up, which is a good start I'd say.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FM1cPS6i24

^^^ empty & aching

"Be careful/His bow-tie is really a camera!"

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee366/lamp11/04Duncan.jpg
#04 DUNCAN
1972
470 points/18 votes/2 #1 votes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngH4zZ-oiuY

his hand gestures/pantomiming in that video totally cracks me up

xp

Duncan was my no.1

wow! didnt expect duncan this high, but happy abt it

if i had voted, America and American Tune might've been my 1-2.

http://www.angelfire.com/al2/diggers/images/americanflag.gif

Hearing the demo, how it's virtually a different song, is so strange.

Duncan also real good, didn't expect to see it at this point

... communists and fags, mm-hm desecrate the flag, just across the Canadian border ...

america's great, glad to see it place so high. love it without question from "let us be lovers...", the way an almost angry passion blooms out at "it took me four days to hitchhike from saginaw, i've...", then recedes almost immediately. love so many things, the precision of observation and invention, wide-eyed naivete struggling for world-weary wisdom, "the man in the gabardine suit was a spy", "though i knew she was sleeping", the sense of being lost in youth, an almost impossible vastness of possibility

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee366/lamp11/03MeJulio.jpg
#03 ME AND JULIO DOWN BY THE SCHOOLYARD
1972
491 points/19 votes/1 #1 vote
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46Cfrl7hMoQ

Woah, I thought Julio was the certain winner.

Duncan was my no.1

― Ismael Klata

Mine too. Love it to pieces.

all the top ten solo simon thus far was also in my top ten, obvious child was num1, graceland and mrs robinson yet to come no

This makes a really surprising top two imo

Mrs. Robinson already placed I thought

It did

my bad

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee366/lamp11/02Only2.jpg
#02 THE ONLY LIVING BOY IN NEW YORK
1970
507 points/19 votes/4 #1 votes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IwYQ1Vqf_4

Beautiful song. What's it about?

New York

i think its supposed to be about simon feeling abandoned and frustrated after garfunkel went to mexico to shoot a movie but to me its sorta about insignificance and hope

It's about the "aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh"s iirc

It's great because it's abandoned and frustrated while also recognizing that the other person SHOULD go, this is what they need to do for them, etc. Sort of a "if you love someone, let them go" kind of song, but conveying how aching and scary and alone it is for the person doing the letting-go.

lol i get the image on this one!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKMeflQn7uQ

And then sort of whistling in the dark (the wordless syllables, do-dilly-da!), coming home at night on the streets of NYC and the lonesomeness somehow deflates itself - hey, I'm doing okay for myself here. I get the news I need on the weather report.

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTgwNjgwNTU4N15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwNDIzMDQ2._V1._SX420_SY276_.jpg

Wow, didn't realize Marcel Dalio was the old man in Catch-22.

Song also reminds me a lot of moments when I've been traveling on my own or something like that, walking around an unfamiliar city by yourself - - it's sort of stressful on the one hand but when you really roll into it, it can be really therapeutic like - Hey. I'm surviving. I'm this atomized, independent person and I can go where I feel like going today. Some major, huge life decisions have crystallized for me on days like that, you sort of sweep away the junk of other stuff that weighs you down (jobs you think you have to take, places you think you have to live) and just feel alive. The only living boy in New York.

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee366/lamp11/01Graceland.jpg
#01 GRACELAND
1986
677 points/24 votes/4 #1 votes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvliMzAFWHM

haha

yeesssssss

Only Living Boy was my #1 but this was close

Some legitimate surprises in the top 5. Great poll!

Best Line in "Graceland"

Paul will approve of this placing. Inexplicably I didn't vote for it, god knows why as it's sublime. If you can check out the 'Classic albums' doc on this just so you can hear the Everly Brothers backing vox unadorned.