{"id":272840,"date":"2025-11-09T21:26:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T21:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/272840\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T21:26:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T21:26:08","slug":"when-paul-simon-quit-his-job-because-he-was-too-good-at-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/272840\/","title":{"rendered":"When Paul Simon quit his job because he was too good at it"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Paul<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Columbia Records)<\/p>\n

Sun 9 November 2025 18:05, UK <\/p>\n

Turns out Paul Simon<\/a> is just generally good. He\u2019s an all-rounder balancing many skills. Sure, he can write a good song, and he can compose a good track, but his abilities go far beyond that. In fact, Simon is perhaps almost too good.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to understate the influence of Paul Simon. In his role as Simon and Garfunkel, he wrote era-defining songs and even soundtracked\u00a0era-defining movies like\u00a0The Graduate<\/a>. They were a mainstay on the thriving folk scene here, helping it become the powerful genre it was, and still is, by penning new classics and standards.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then, in his solo work too, Simon\u2019s influence loomed large. A track like \u201850 Ways To Leave Your Love\u2019 is written into the world\u2019s songbook as one of those tunes everyone knows, while a song like \u2018Graceland\u2019 and the album it gives title to proves that Simon\u2019s experimentation wasn\u2019t stalled at all by that new chapter, it only got more interesting.<\/p>\n

In the modern day, his influence is palpable. Countless modern stars lay thanks at his feet as Harry Styles regularly cites Simon as an influence, saying in 2019, \u201cI wish I had written \u201950 Ways to Leave Your Lover,’\u201d calling it, \u201cthe greatest verse melody ever written\u201d.<\/a> Lorde also looks up to the star, seeing him as a pinnacle to reach, as she told The Guardian, \u201cI want to be really, really good one day. I think I\u2019m pretty good now. I think I\u2019ve made a good start. But I want to be Paul Simon.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, as he\u2019s well established in his music, Simon is more than just good, or even really, really good. Even in the wider world outside of being an artist, he proved that, as it once literally put him out of a job when he tried to first enter the regular working world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While pursuing his own music early on<\/a>, Simon got a job in the industry in any way he could, as he began working for a music publisher, E B Marks. As a true legacy company that had been running a long time before Simon ever graced its door, the publishers had an extensive back catalogue and a long-established way of doing things.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Really, though, Simon was a lousy publisher and a worse salesman, so perhaps we\u2019ve found one flaw. \u201cI couldn\u2019t sell one song,\u201d he told Rolling Stone, \u201cIt was rock & roll\u2019s time. I felt bad, I couldn\u2019t get anything sold, and so I\u2019d write a song and let them publish it.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, what Simon could do was write up a mean report. Turns out the man has a knack for professional documents. As reported by Rolling Stone, the story goes: \u201cOne day, the man who owned E.B. Marks called him in and asked, \u2018Who wrote this report?\u2019 Simon answered that he had. The man said, \u2018No, you didn\u2019t.\u2019 Simon said, \u2018Yes, I did.\u2019 The man insisted, \u2018No, you didn\u2019t. It\u2019s written too well.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The back and forth pissed Simon off as it felt like the company was questioning his intelligence. This was a man with an English degree from Queens College, didn\u2019t they know?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFuck you, I quit.\u201d That was Simon\u2019s response. No one was going to tell him he was too good at doing the job he realistically didn\u2019t even want to be doing. So he walked as perhaps the only man to be forced out of a company by being too skilled.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Columbia Records) Sun 9 November 2025 18:05, UK Turns out Paul Simon is just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341,125011,125012],"class_list":{"0":"post-272840","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-paul-simon","13":"tag-simon-and-garfunkel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}