![\"Paul](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Paul-Simon-Musician-1986-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Record Sleeve)<\/p>\n
Tue 11 November 2025 17:30, UK <\/p>\n
No one can fault Paul Simon<\/a> for wanting to be a perfectionist in his writing. <\/p>\n There\u2019s not a soul that starts writing songs that doesn\u2019t want to become a master of their craft, and given the amount of time that Simon worked on making sure his songs were exactly right, he deserves a spot below people like Bob Dylan among the greatest songwriters that pop ever spat out. But he could raise his hand and admit when a handful of his songs had a few fatal flaws behind the great melodies.<\/p>\n Then again, it\u2019s easy to take a lot of the biggest songwriters of all time with a grain of salt. They\u2019re always going to be a touch biased when it comes to their own records, and while it\u2019s nice to have songs that they are proud of, there are more than a few times when someone like John Lennon would drag his own material through the mud and call the greatest Beatles songs nothing but trash.<\/p>\n But Simon\u2019s approach to writing was a much different story. He wanted the respect of his peers as a musical visionary, but the lyrics were as important as everything else. \u2018The Sound of Silence\u2019 might not have been his personal favourite line he ever wrote, but when listening to the rest of his catalogue, it\u2019s clear that he wanted to have music that reflected where he was at the time, rather than worrying about what kind of record was making the rounds on the charts.\u00a0<\/p>\n So when he cut himself loose from Simon and Garfunkel, he should have been given free rein to do whatever the hell he wanted to do. His debut solo record already had some decent singles on it, like \u2018Mother and Child Reunion\u2019 and \u2018Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard<\/a>\u2019, but he knew that he had the potential to do more. So if he couldn\u2019t get the sound in his head with the rest of his band, it was time for him to venture into the realm of studio work and bring in the best technicians he could.\u00a0<\/p>\n And of all his records, Still Crazy After All These Years feels a lot more indebted to that sound. Not everything on the record is a jazz-pop odyssey or anything, but there\u2019s always subtle lilts in the music on tracks like \u201850 Ways To Leave Your Lover\u2019 that are a lot more interesting than if he were playing the same folksy chords that he would have back in his early days singing \u2018I Am A Rock\u2019.<\/p>\n