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Tue 22 September 2026 20:30, UK
When talking about anything related to Simon and Garfunkel, the first thing that comes to mind is the harmonies.
The duo weren’t exactly making the most sophisticated vocal arrangements in the history of anything, but when you listen to the way that they both work off each other, it’s insane to think that such brilliance was coming out of only two people. But with all of the room that they had, Paul Simon figured that there was so much more to life than singing in a typical folk-rock outfit.
His ear was trained more towards music that didn’t have a specific genre, and even if he had a set idea for what he wanted his songs to be, he was moving in a much different direction than Art Garfunkel. There was nothing wrong with the way that his partner sounded, but given the nature of the world music and rhythms that Simon was listening to, there was no need for him to keep on making the same kinds of folksy songs that had a bunch of fingerpicking and nothing else to offer.
He wanted the chance to make something a bit more cerebral, but he had to admit that there was some magic between the two of them when they sang. You could hear traces of acts like The Everly Brothers every single time they sang, and while that wasn’t a mistake or anything, Simon knew that there was a lot of uncharted territory for him to explore instead of singing ‘Bye Bye Love’ all the time.
So, by the time of Bridge Over Troubled Water, he wasn’t willing to bend to Garfunkel’s will again. He liked making music that was more adventurous, and while that led to some of the potential songs getting the boot from the record, Simon was at least respectful enough to include a few tunes that had a decent shot at radio play, like ‘The Boxer’.
But even on an album like this, ‘The Only Living Boy in New York’ was his token introspective ballad. The whole record was all about him trying to find his way on his own, but for a song that’s dwelling on a topic like loneliness, it’s insane to imagine that same song being the one where both he and Garfunkel sounded the most united when playing off each other in the studio.
Compared to Simon’s other great tunes on the record, he held this up as one of the finest songs that they ever sang together, saying, “I liked the ‘aaahhhs’, the voices singing ‘aaah’. That was the best I think that we ever did. It was quite a lot of voices we put on, maybe 12 or 15 voices. We sang it in the echo-chamber.” They’re not the most imaginative lyrics of all time, but it does at least give a nice backdrop to Simon’s tune.
Further reading: From The Vault
You have to remember that a song is only as good as the atmosphere it creates, and his tale about a kid trying to find his way through the biggest city in the world is really helped by those background harmonies. They’re not the most complicated lines in the world, but you can feel how isolated a song like this can be when you have those voices lingering in the background.
Simon might have seen the track as yet another folk tune that he was typecast in, but that kind of musical DNA never truly goes away. He could make a lot more tunes like that going forward, but that knowledge of harmony is something that’s really baked into the fabric of every song he sings, whether he knows it or not.
