Jazz Articles about Paul Simon

About Paul Simon

Radio & Podcasts

Ashley Kahn on the Miracles and Wonder of Paul Simon’s Graceland

by Leo Sidran
August 26, 2026

Forty years ago this month, Paul Simon released Graceland, an album that became one of the defining records of his career, and one of the most celebrated and debated albums of its era.The story famously begins with a cassette of South African township music that Simon couldn't stop listening to. He followed that sound to Johannesburg, where he began recording with local musicians, eventually building an album that also incorporated zydeco, Norteño music, gospel and the sounds of ...

Live Review

Paul Simon at Flushing Meadows Corona Park

by Mike Perciaccante
October 13, 2018

Paul Simon Flushing Meadows Corona Park Homeward Bound: The Farewell Performance Flushing, NY September 22, 2018 “Hello, my friends!"--so began Paul Simon's farewell concert, held in the New York City borough where it all began. The location, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, was the site of two World's Fairs (1939 and 1964), and is, according to Simon, a twenty-minute bicycle ride from where he grew up. The two-and-a-half-hour, career-spanning concert represented a perfect ...

Album Review

Paul Simon: In The Blue Light

Read "In The Blue Light" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
September 23, 2018

To this very day, as he readies the last shows of his Homeward Bound tour, Paul Simon's new is as new as his old once was. When your most maligned works, 1980's One Trick Pony (Warner Brothers), 84's dark epic Heart and Bones (Warner Brothers), and 97's errant Songs From The Capeman (Warner Brothers, 1997) yields such lasting beauty as “Late in The Evening," “Hearts and Bones," “The Late, Great Johnny Ace," “The Vampires," and “Adious Hermanos," a severe re-assessment ...

Album Review

Paul Simon: In The Blue Light

Read "In The Blue Light" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski

by Nenad Georgievski
September 5, 2018

It's not unusual for artists to re-record a song or two from their past oeuvre. Actually, the history of music is replete with artists revisiting their past achievements. This goes all the way to the era of crooners, and one can see singers like Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett offering different takes on same songs in different settings at different times. Even though this is a new era, the process of revisiting and re-creating past songs and even entire albums ...

Extended Analysis

Paul Simon: The Complete Albums Collection

by John Kelman
January 11, 2014

If the history books were to be closed on singer/songwriter Paul Simon's career today, he'd have already left a legacy more than sufficient to ensure a substantial chapter. While other emergent songwriters of his day--Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Randy Newman amongst them--have clearly evolved over the years, there's been an underlying approach that's remained consistent across, in many cases, half a century. That's not to dismiss or denigrate these icons of song, only to say that Simon has emerged ...

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Album Review

Paul Simon: So Beautiful or So What

Read "So Beautiful or So What" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
April 28, 2011

After successful run at self-producing, yielding hits like Graceland (Warner Bros., 1986) and The Rhythm of the Saints (Warner Bros., 1990), Paul Simon reunites with Phil Ramone for So Beautiful or So What, the singer/songwriter's first album since the largely overlooked Surprise (Warner Bros., 2006). Ramone last worked with the singer/songwriter on One Trick Pony (Warner Bros., 1980), but was responsible for producing many of Simon's early hits from the 1970s. After breaking out with the iconic ...

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Album Review

Simon & Garfunkel: Live 1969

Read "Live 1969" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
August 12, 2008

Recorded during performances in October and November '69 for what was supposed to be the live album follow-up to Bridge Over Troubled Water (which the duo had recorded before these concerts but was not yet released on Columbia), Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel capture on Live 1969 the mood of their generation changing. That live album never came out (until now) because during those dates their mystic musical communion was disintegrating, although you'd never know that from its joyful sound.