Behind the Song Episode 45: Simon & Garfunkel "America"
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- Опубликовано: 1 июл 2020
- Simon & Garfunkel's 1968 album, Bookends, was released during one of the most turbulent periods in American history: social upheaval and political division were on the rise, and both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. Americans were feeling disillusioned and confused. Paul Simon put those feelings into words in the lyrics of the song "America" - but it was based on a real-life road trip he had taken with his ex-girlfriend. It is a love letter to the memory of that girl, and also to the memory of an America that was changing. In this episode of Behind The Song, explore the meaning of the lyrics of one of Simon's most poignant songs.
Music: Christian Lane
Video Director: Michael Collier
About Janda:
Behind The Song podcast host and creator Janda Lane is a radio DJ at WDRV-FM in Chicago, the city she now calls home with her husband and podcast partner, Christian Lane, and their two cats, Ollie and Liam. She is a transplant from Los Angeles, where she was a video director at Fender, Executive Producer at Yahoo Music, playlist curator for ITunes, worked in rock management with artists like the Foo Fighters and Beck, was on the radio at KCRW, and she was a DJ at online radio pioneer site Soundbreak. She has not worked a day in her life. 
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I still love this song I heard when I was a kid.
I want Paul Simon to live a long life and sing this song from time to time.
With love from Japan.
Very nice commentary. My fave SG song.
Man Janda, you are good. Love your insight into this beautiful song. Thanks
Thanks for listening!
I think the best moment was 'the moon rose over an open field' exposing the reality Paul is facing. Wonderful metaphor.
What better metaphor could suggest the illumination of the absence of anything spectacular? The feeling seems to resonate with his lyrical journey.
The part where they are pretending the man on the bus is a spy is brilliant because after that rather playful episode the music slowly dies down as if they’re thinking Ok the fun’s over now back to reality. That is genius songwriting!
For me, the playout is the most melancholy sound I've ever heard expressed in a song; that wonderful series of downward harmonic steps with the the organ always brings a lump to my throat.
Can't recall where I heard this, but I always believed the line about real estate was a euphemism for cannabis. In that musicians would say they invested in real estate when what they really meant was they blew it on drugs. They bought the cigarettes to mix with the weed, and the pies for the munchies.
Janda, a lovely analysis of one of my all time favourites. I remember playing it on my guitar in the late 70s, in country NSW, Australia, and dreaming of back-packing around the U. S. Which I finally did, in '88, and have been back many times since. We need the America of this song, now, more than ever. Have just discovered your gem of a podcast! Thank you 🙏👏🤘
that song hits home
Brilliantly done.....Thank You.
I love this channel
Thank you!
5:26 I always interpreted the line “I’ve got some real estate here in my bag” as meaning that he either inherited or purchased a house or some property, and was humbly pointing out what he brings to the table for them to “marry their fortunes together”.
I used to think he was referring to a deed. Now, I imagine he was being ironic. Their "fortunes" were nearly nothing. Perhaps some cigarettes and bus fare. He had the "real estate" in his bag to accommodate all of her earthly possessions and his.
They were good
They were good then and now
They were downright genius in terms of lyrics, and their harmonies can’t be beat!
Sounds of silence
you are brilliant
Brilliant??? Hey now,.....these days everybody gets an A+
Reading off a laundry list of simple historic S&G facts you can find for about four decades now? Quite easilyLonger than this girl has been alive.
Then running through a bunch of simplistic feelings trying to explain what she thinks was in Paul's head at the time.
That America is unfortunately so far gone now ....Ruined by the very people, she romanticizes having some kind of overly simplistic unrest in their heads back then.
Surely we have to latch onto every tortured moment from that generation because they never shut up about themselves and how important they were.... We'll get to that later.
Instead The song is a bit of a troubadour travel anthem because that's what Paul was doing at the time here and in England. Roberta Flack wrote "killing me softly with his song" while listening to Paul in Greenwich Village (supposedly) one night. The man was an exceptional writer, and he had chops enough to play up to those strengths Time has considerably withered his writing prowess.
Funny how he seems to have grown angry with a number of things over time Considering he is wealthy enough to have an easy life or possibly find a good psychiatric counselor that he can afford. I'm not gonna get into his marital troubles. I saw evidence of it in New York City on one occasion at the car show. I'll leave it at that. Not an Edie Brickell fan but she didn't deserve what I saw happening and Paul didn't seem impressed with his fans that day either.
So This piece of fluff came on after I had played the song. I listened all the way through. This girl is impressed with herself. Building her own fan club I imagine. She's well groomed and looks clean, thankfully She's not sporting a Gray unkempt chopped Barnett, far emoved from the subjects and denizens of the time frame in this song. Many, who still maintain an outsized view of their generation. Which literally f@cked up many many things and continues to do so now that they have taken control of this country and engineered its incredible demise.
Nice that she enjoys this and understands it's a considerable work.However I could do without the musings, somewhat romanticized like some kind of a college writing project For millennials or whatever unserious name, people use to objectify themselves by generation.
You might ask yourselves why people are leaving these rotting faded, fetid horrible cities… They're not hitchhiking from Saginaw, they're bolting Detroit and other shiteholes with everything they own for someplace in this country with safety and sanity. I'm sure there's a song in that somewhere ....talk about a protest song?.....there's certainly one ripe to be made About the generation that destroyed this country .....possibly in Aminor for assholes.
This is really excellent. Janda is very good at this.
This so g speaks to me in political resonances. I'm curious to know if the Republicans who follow Trump and hail him as a protagonist for America, ever listened to this song and the other Paul Simon song, "An American Tune." Something happened back in the 60's that divided the country, (more than just the Vietnam war, the Beatles, Rock n Roll) and like the last infinite ripples in waves, the country is still exorcising whatever that thing was, is.
The 60s were the first wave of Marxist ideological infestation on American universities. Simon was a very impressionable young man who cared very deeply about how he was perceived. His music throughout his life was an expression of his need to be accepted among his peers. The malaise about America was a manufactured one designed to weaken America's belief in itself, making it susceptible to subversion. The current Anti Trump and the Climate Alarmism Hysteria, and the warmongering by the Left is a Second Wave of Marxist pablum. The 50 years of brainwashing in media, movies, and journalism have ushered in a new more intensive melancholy that is simply part of the American Deconstruction process. " They've all come to look for America" because they can't see what they've turned their back on. The search for meaning is difficult when you've been taught to reject all you've been told.
Excellent commentary. I was waiting to say something about how the lyric doesn't rhyme (how many pop songs can that be said of?), but you beat me to it. It's something not many people point out.
Thank you!
Fantastic analysis. Spot on.
Kathy was super young at the time.
Apparently, Paul needed that and still does. Kind of an angry little willful husband… "He's dappled and dangled, really quite angry, and I don't know whyyyy.🎶?"
"Kathy🔹, I said get me a beer in the kitchen. There's one in the fridge.!!!"
I believe it's control issues. Saw him having a bit of a fit with Edie at the car show many years ago in Manhattan. They were eyeballing a Porsche 928 and something set him off on the way out.....
Pretty rude to the fans as well.
Poor little rich boy.
The best part was when the fans that had been hanging around for a half an hour to get an autograph threw insults at him. I have to say I was amused, especially the guy who read my mind and shouted "Paul you suck you haven't written anything good in years!"
They were good
They were good
They were good then and now
They were good
They were good then and now