{"id":402426,"date":"2026-02-01T14:49:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T14:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/402426\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T14:49:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T14:49:10","slug":"the-paul-simon-song-he-got-all-wrong-and-people-misunderstand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/402426\/","title":{"rendered":"The Paul Simon song he got all wrong and people misunderstand"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\u2018Mother<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Album Cover)<\/p>\n

Sun 1 February 2026 12:38, UK <\/p>\n

Songwriting wasn\u2019t an exact process for Paul Simon<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Although he\u2019s renowned as one of the finest lyricists and composers of his generation, even teaching a class on songwriting during his brief sojourn to Britain before the success of Simon & Garfunkel, Simon didn\u2019t have a specific formula he used to create his music. In fact, some songs had to be assembled bit by bit, as was the case for the title track to Simon\u2019s 1975 album Still Crazy After All These Years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn \u2018Still Crazy After All These Years,\u2019 that title phrase came to me first,\u201d Simon revealed to SongTalk in 1990. \u201cAnd it didn\u2019t come with melody, either. It just came as a line. And then I had to create a story.\u201d With its jazzy chord changes and melancholy atmosphere, Simon credited the feeling of \u2018Still Crazy\u2019 to one of his collaborators at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was studying with a bass player and composer named Chuck Israels at the time so I was doing more interesting changes,\u201d Simon added. \u201cI was studying harmony with him. Instead of using a minor chord, I use a major chord and go up a step. It is hard to get an interesting key change. I also like to write a bridge and just jump a whole tone up. \u2018Still Crazy\u2019 has that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Still Crazy\u2019 had actually been developed in the public eye. When Simon appeared on The Dick Cavett Show in 1974, he previewed the first two verses of \u2018Still Crazy\u2019 while admitting that he didn\u2019t have the rest of the song mapped out. Simon admitted that he had been \u201cstumped for a while\u201d, while Cavett bragged about finishing a lyric for Stephen Sondheim when the Broadway composer appeared on the show.<\/p>\n

Simon eventually got around to finishing \u2018Still Crazy After All These Years\u2019 the following year. He would perform the song twice in two years on Saturday Night Live, the second of which became an iconic sketch thanks to Simon singing the song in a full turkey costume<\/a>. Still, Simon was never fully happy with the finished product. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe song is a bit darker than people think,\u201d Simon explained to Q Magazine. \u201cBecause the chorus and the phrase are so suggestive of a long time passing, it has a touch of the \u2018Auld Lang Syne\u2019 to it. I don\u2019t think people pay attention to the lyrics of the song, which makes me feel I probably wrote the wrong lyric to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That dissatisfaction feels characteristic of Simon\u2019s relationship with his own work. Even when a song connects deeply with an audience, he has often been more interested in what didn\u2019t quite land as intended than in the applause it received. \u2018Still Crazy After All These Years\u2019 became one of his most recognisable songs, yet Simon continued to view it through the lens of craft rather than sentiment, hearing the compromises and missed turns more loudly than the praise.<\/p>\n

In that sense, the song stands as a quiet example of how Simon\u2019s writing process resists closure. A phrase arrives without a melody, a harmony opens a new emotional door, a performance crystallises something unfinished, and still the song never fully settles for its creator. That tension between intent and interpretation is baked into the music itself, and perhaps that lingering uncertainty is why \u2018Still Crazy After All These Years\u2019 continues to feel so human, unresolved, and strangely alive decades later.<\/p>\n

Check out \u2018Still Crazy After All These Years\u2019 down below. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Album Cover) Sun 1 February 2026 12:38, UK Songwriting wasn\u2019t an exact process for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,37050,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-402426","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-paul-simon","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}