![\"Paul](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Paul-Simon-Musician-2026-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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Credit: YouTube Still<\/p>\n
Paul Simon<\/a> didn\u2019t want to be defined by any one genre for the rest of his life. <\/p>\n Even though there are only so many places for someone to go with an acoustic guitar in their hands, Simon figured that the world of music meant much more than a bunch of fingerpicking tunes that everyone could sing along to. He needed a better outlet for his music, and that meant having to break away from Art Garfunkel<\/a> if he was getting too trapped by what his old friend wanted to play.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not like Simon and Garfunkel were ever the most intense rock and roll band in the world, but the fact that they managed to cram masterpieces within the span of a few years is why Simon should be thought of as a legend. The idea of making a record like \u2018The Sound of Silence\u2019 would have been enough for any other songwriter to have for the rest of their lives<\/a>, but Simon wanted the chance to give his audience something that they hadn\u2019t heard before whenever he made one of his records.<\/p>\n That probably explains why Bookends ended up sounding like two totally different albums from one side to the next, but Bridge Over Troubled Water is the sound of both sides of Simon wrestling with each other. He could have easily continued down the road of making the title track and giving the pretty tunes to Garfunkel to sing every time they performed, but he understood that his friend wasn\u2019t going to be satisfied playing the kind of rhythmic exercises that he was doing.<\/p>\n He wanted to have a greater emphasis on the percussive side of things, and that wasn\u2019t going to bode well for a band that made their living off of ballads, saying<\/a>, \u201cWe would have broken up anyway because Artie thrives on big ballads and I like to write rhythm and Artie doesn\u2019t like to sing rhythm. The thought of having to write a \u2018Bridge Over Troubled Water\u2019 every album is too daunting, given what happened with \u2018Bridge Over Troubled Water\u2019. So he went his way and sang the songs that he wanted to sing and I began doing what I like to do. It would have happened anyway because that\u2019s who we were musically.\u201d<\/p>\n Granted, it\u2019s not like Simon was everything thinking too outside the box or anything. While I\u2019m sure there\u2019s probably a scant few people wondering what a Paul Simon polka album would have probably sounded like, a lot of his music was the same kind of pop music he had been doing before, only this time playing around with rhythm. Even when he was making laid-back songs right after the band broke up, \u2018Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard\u2019<\/a> had a lot more jump to it than anything else Simon and Garfunkel made.<\/p>\n In fact, you can really hear the kind of musician that Simon wanted to become based on the songs that Garfunkel didn\u2019t show up for. The singer was already making movies like Catch 22, but if Simon was left to his own devices<\/a>, he could get away with writing a song like \u2018Baby Driver\u2019 and now have to worry about what his friend thought. His tunes had a lot better pulse to them, and that\u2019s all he needed.<\/p>\n And especially compared to Graceland, Simon and Garfunkel weren\u2019t really equipped to make that kind of leap. The ballads that Simon had written back in the day served their purpose as some of the greatest songs of their time, but even when he did bring the tone down a little bit, a song like \u2018Under African Skies\u2019 still had a greater sense of urgency to it that you weren\u2019t going to get out of Garfunkel\u2019s ballads.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not to say that Simon\u2019s bandmate didn\u2019t have some great tunes in him, either. \u2018All I Know\u2019 and \u2018Bright Eyes\u2019 are still some fantastic songs in their own right, but if we\u2019re talking about the kinds of tunes that will be remembered centuries from now, Simon\u2019s resume is a lot more impressive than Garfunkel trying to make everything sound perfect for the moment. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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