A fun thing about the song You Can Call Me Al is that over the course of just a few decades you can go from "haha this song is neat, that bassline is sick" to "why is Paul Simon making all these cutting remarks about me personally"
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The protagonist is in a foreign country, and he understands absolutely nothing about where he is or how the place works. He's naive, and it's not the country that's strange or "primitive;" it's him.
Graceland is easily in my top 10 of the 80s albums. Its genius normalized recording albums outside of NYC and LA for American artists. It's not that nobody recorded elsewhere previously, but a lot of major label acts still called the same studio musicians from NY and LA and flew them in.
But this album was recorded in South Africa at the end of apartheid and hired local studio musicians and artists to record with. It was controversial at the time, but history now shows us Simon helped open the eyes of many apathetic Americans who then took up the cause of ending apartheid.
And that's all before I talk about that bass line you're talking about and its creator, Bakithi Kumalo, who bought the fretless you hear on other tracks on that album like "Boy in the Bubble" and the title track "Graceland” two weeks before the session.
LOL honestly, that was how I read it the first time, and I’m definitely old enough to remember the song when it came out. It took a half second for my brain to shift out of 2024 back to the 80s. Maybe my brain was just in a hazy shade of winter due to the solstice.
Very much the feeling of "I was told there'd be cake" and instead still fighting to keep one's head above water as middle age kicks in. Hey wait a second what gives
Then you dive back into rhythm of the saints on your way into work, moving like a fist through traffic, anger and no one can heal it, get into the office and realize “oh shit my boss really is the crusher of language”
Years ago someone pointed out to me that the bassline reverses halfway through that breakdown where you only hear the bass, and it stays in reverse for the rest of the song.
I recently heard him say in an interview that he’ll never perform that song live again because his ears can’t handle the loud horns any more. Too bad youth is wasted on the young
Time is a cruel mistress especially after I got married. Now she is just unrelenting! I’ve noticed that with so much though too like fr how does Paul know what will hurt so much 🥺
My irl name is Alice, so yeah, could be called Al, but my husband wasn't impressed by my suggestion that a second daughter could be named Betty so I could sing that to her. Even though my Grandma was legit called Betty so it'd be a family thing.
Reminds me of uni during pre-lockdown covid. We were having a goodbye drink before people went back home in case the lockdown trapped us in London. Diamonds on the Soles of Her Feet came on (none of us knew it) and we had a Rosie in our group. If you know the chorus you'd know why we felt haunted
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That song is prophetic
Its ridiculously beautiful. Aging and you can't save the world
(I've been That Guy a time or two...)
"Fat Charlie the Archangel files for divorce
Well this'll eat up a year of my life
Then there's all that weight to be lost."
She was the kind of girl who could say things that weren't that funny
Obvious child is my fave off the album.
The title of my autobiography.