(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Tue 20 January 2026 16:00, UK
In the age of singer-songwriters, there’s hardly anyone who could really compete with what Paul Simon could do.
There are some artists who have tried their hardest to be sincere in their songs, but the kind of character portraits that Simon has in his arsenal has made for one of the most consistent careers of any rock and roll act. But when looking at the technical side of his work, Simon was more likely to be remembered as much for his ear for arranging as he is for those works of poetry.
No matter what genre he found himself in, Simon always knew what the greatest songs needed to become legendary. Anyone wouldn’t have had the first clue of what to do if they were working with South African musicians when making Graceland, but given how long Simon had been working on his classics, he practically reverse-engineered his process and translated what he wanted to the musicians in whatever way they knew how.
That might have made for some of the greatest world music to ever hit the charts, but they were still pop records at the end of the day. Simon always had a great melody as the foundation to whatever he did, but even if he had made a tune that was impossibly catchy from the minute it hit your eardrums, it wasn’t going to mean anything if it didn’t have the right person singing along with him.
Which probably explains why he and Art Garfunkel worked so well together. They might not have seen eye-to-eye on every single thing, but it’s hard to imagine anyone else but Garfunkel singing ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, despite Simon saying that he wished he had been able to sing it. He may have missed out on one of the greatest songs of all time, but he knew which songs suited someone’s voice the best.
But rarely do you get a songwriter who was as singular as Neil Diamond was whenever he wrote a tune. His habit for schmaltzy tunes might not have been the coolest thing in the world, but when anyone else grabbed ahold of his tunes, they would fly off into the stratosphere. The Monkees turned ‘I’m A Believer’ into a classic, UB40 transformed ‘Red Red Wine’ whenever they heard it, but it was ‘You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore’ that made Simon stand at attention when he first heard it.
It’s a lovely melody, and Diamond could have easily turned it into yet another one of his hits, but there was never anyone that could do justice to the song quite like Barbara Streisand, saying at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “It was a beautiful love song, sung by one of the greatest voices of the 20th century, Barbara Streisand. At the same time, if it is sung by Barbara Streisand, it is not rock and roll, and I don’t think they let that DNA even close to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which is a tough break for Neil.”
But not even one of the most charismatic singers of the 1970s could have managed to sing anything like Streisand. Say what you will about her sentimental tunes, but there isn’t a soul on this Earth who can listen to a song like ‘The Way We Were’ without getting a little bit emotional. She might not have written all her material, but she could embody a song better than anyone in the music industry, rock and roll or otherwise.
And while it would take a miracle for Simon to match even a fraction of what Streisand could do with her voice, it was never a slight against any songwriter to have their songs sung by her. Because if she found something that resonated with her on record, it was like getting knighted by one of the titans of the music business.
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