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(Credits: Far Out \/ Joost Evers. Nationaal Archief \/ Capitol Records)<\/p>\n
Mon 3 November 2025 19:00, UK <\/p>\n
As a millennial, learning to love 1960s<\/a> music was a tricky task. <\/p>\n Because before I could scratch together the coins to start buying my own records, the places I would first hear these songs would be films. And at the turn of the millennium, there was a string of trashy movies that celebrated the music of this decade with what I now realise were horrific pop-punk covers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Before I ever heard Simon and Garfunkel sing \u2018Mrs Robinson\u2019 for the first time, and before I ever experienced the beautiful realisation that this song was part of a curated soundtrack for The Graduate, it was forced upon me through the lens of ultimate millennial trash. When one of the most famed characters of that era \u2013 Stifler\u2019s Mom \u2013 was seduced by Paul Finch in American Pie, the great Simon and Garfunkel track rang out.<\/p>\n Granted, given the subject matter, it was perhaps the perfect song to use in that film. But then, 13 years later, when I had watched\u00a0The Graduate,\u00a0and learned to love Paul Simon\u2019s music, and then subsequently heard The Lemonheads\u2019 god awful cover of the song in\u00a0The Wolf of Wall Street,\u00a0I wondered how and why this track had become a pawn in cultural exploitation? Especially when its origin is related to such a hyper-specific cinematic moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n Well, it\u2019s likely because the 1960s as a decade were rife with covers. It was commonplace for artists to launch their careers and achieve chart number ones by reimagining the work of another artist. But, in 1969, the year in which Frank Sinatra decided to cover it, you could safely say that the iconic musician needed neither a career launch nor a chart number one.<\/p>\n