Graceland - Paul Simon
This was written before I had a dedicated template I was using for reviews.
Track List:
The Boy In The Bubble
Graceland
I Know What I Know
Gumboots
Diamonds On The Souls Of Her Shoes
You Can Call Me Al
Under African Skies
Homeless
Crazy Love Vol. II
That Was Your Mother
All Around The World or The Myth Of Fingerprints
Songs I have heard before this listening:
You Can Call Me Al
Songs I think could have been singles:
The Boy in the Bubble - It’s the first track and is well mixed and balanced. I would think this was the B side of the title track single.
Graceland - It’s the title track and I suspect was the lead single.
You Can Call Me Al - This is one I’ve heard, the intro an iconic 80’s synth riff.
Diamonds on the Souls of her Shoes - This song is polished enough It makes me think it was a single, it’s a pretty good representation for the album.
Other artists this reminds me of:
Simon and Garfunkel - It’s cheating right? But the dreary laments of Simon and Garfunkel didn’t infiltrate this album (which is not what I expected but I am glad I was surprised.)
Notes on the music:
There are a wide range of types of music here, and what I originally thought was a Caribbean influence turned out to be influence from South Africa, research was done after listening. This realization also changed the way I saw the song Diamonds on the soles of her shoes given the diamond mining industries influence on the region.
A good chunk of the album doesn't fall for tropes of when it was produced.
There is a neat mix of what I assume are traditional African instruments and western songwriting here.
Notes on individual Songs
You can call me Al
Thankfully the decision to stray from synth pop didn’t stay from this song. This is one of the most instantly recognizable synth riffs along side Take on Me, Jump, or Sweet Dreams. The song does continue the use of traditional African sounding instruments along with western ones.
All Around the World or The Myth of Fingerprints
Simon encounters a former talk show host who has lost his faith in humanity. He claims to have seen all men and they are all the same. I believe this is more speaking about the talk show hosts impressions based on being famous. But also has Simon using this to highlight equality in all people, which also unfortunately includes racism, equating representation of racism against African Americans in the United States:
Well, the sun gets weary
And the sun goes down
Ever since the watermelon
To racism in South Africa:
And the lights come up
On the black pit town
Somebody says what's a better thing to do
Then acknowledging that this is a human problem that is not unique to any individual society:
Well, it's not just me
And it's not just you
This is all around the world
Given the state of today’s world it amazes me the outrage that folks get over “woke” media when there are obvious and clear call outs to things like systemic racism in this song which is from nearly 40 years ago. It seems like as a society we should have progressed or grown and matured over multiple decades, yet we appear more to be regressing.
