{"id":428464,"date":"2026-02-16T10:08:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T10:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/428464\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T10:08:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T10:08:14","slug":"how-paul-simons-biggest-hit-led-to-one-of-his-sorest-regrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/428464\/","title":{"rendered":"How Paul Simon’s biggest hit led to one of his sorest regrets"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Paul<\/p>\n

(Credits: Harry Chase, Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Sun 15 February 2026 18:34, UK <\/p>\n

Walking outside on a sunny day might be good for one\u2019s mental health, but it\u2019s not necessarily the best way to get the creative juices flowing, because when a 21-year-old Paul Simon<\/a> wrote arguably his greatest song, \u2018The Sound of Silence\u2019, he was locked in his own bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub with the lights out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d turn on the faucet so that water would run,\u201d Simon later said of his songwriting process at the time, \u201cI like that sound, it\u2019s very soothing to me. And I\u2019d play in the dark\u201d. Cut off from half his senses, he wrote, \u201cHello, darkness, my old friend\u201d, and the rest was history. <\/p>\n

Toward the end of 1965, an overdubbed electric version of the song became the first number-one hit for Simon & Garfunkel, and catapulted its songwriter into the conversation with Bob Dylan as one of the exciting new voices in popular music.<\/p>\n

The experience would have been surreal enough had Simon still been living in New York, but when \u2018The Sound of Silence\u2019 began its ascent up the US charts, he was in London, having extricated himself from the States in the wake of the initial poor sales of S&G\u2019s debut album. <\/p>\n

Despite his obvious talent, he hadn\u2019t felt entirely part of the community of folkies in Greenwich Village, for he was a New Yorker but came from Queens and so was treated at times like an outsider, a second-class citizen. By contrast, he\u2019d found a much warmer atmosphere in the coffee houses of the UK, and might well have stayed longer had the sudden success of \u2018The Sound of Silence\u2019<\/a> not changed the outlook for Simon & Garfunkel\u2019s career prospects.<\/p>\n

\"Greenwich<\/a>(Credits: Far Out \/ Felix Stahlberg)<\/p>\n

During a concert at Tufts University in 1967, Simon recounted this period to the audience and how his return to New York in December of 1965 had affected him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to make this adjustment from being relatively unknown in England to being semi-famous here,\u201d he said, \u201cand I didn\u2019t really swing with it. It was a very difficult scene to make, and I was writing very depressed-type songs until around June of [1966]. I started to swing out of it, I was getting into a good mood, and I remember coming home in the morning about six o\u2019clock over the 59th Street Bridge in New York, and it was such a groovy day\u2026so I started to write a song that later became the \u201859th Street Bridge Song\u2019 or \u2018Feelin\u2019 Groovy\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

The vibes of \u2018Feelin\u2019 Groovy\u2019 were just what he needed on that summer\u2019s day, and while the eventual Simon & Garfunkel recording of the song was never a hit, a 1967 cover version by the band Harpers Bizarre reached number 13 on the US charts, immortalising the tune as one of the classics of the Summer of Love.<\/p>\n

Had Paul Simon been a typical songwriter from the era, with three or four memorable songs to his name, that might have been all well and good. Unfortunately, as the years passed, \u201859th Street Bridge Song\u2019 began to feel more like a slightly embarrassing anomaly in comparison to his endless catalogue of revered and thought-provoking work. It was a cute snapshot of a moment in time, dated by its own slang, but not a song the singer had much nostalgia for, despite its rosy origin story. <\/p>\n

Eventually, after a few decades of being asked by passersby on the street if he was \u201cfeeling groovy?\u201d, Simon came to loathe the song that had once helped him navigate the life-changing aftermath of \u2018The Sound of Silence\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Simon<\/a> had hinted at his antagonistic relationship with \u201859th Street Bridge\u2019 in the past, but it was during a 2018 concert in Portland, Oregon, that people really came to understand how much he seemed to regret its existence. While playing \u2018The Cool, Cool River\u2019, he forgot the lyrics and informed the audience that he was going to switch gears, declaring, \u201cI\u2019m going to penalise myself. I\u2019m going to sing one of my songs that I loathe\u201d, and started playing the familiar opening bars of \u2018Feelin\u2019 Groovy\u2019 to cheers from the crowd.<\/p>\n

Three years later, in 2021, Simon told Stephen Colbert that one line in the song, \u201cLife, I love you. All is groovy\u201d, really made him \u201ccringe\u201d more than any other, and that he dreaded any time he heard it, mustering an \u201cUgh!\u201d after he forced himself to repeat it.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Harry Chase, Los Angeles Times) Sun 15 February 2026 18:34, UK Walking outside on a sunny day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,37050,101379,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-428464","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-simon-and-garfunkel","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428464","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=428464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}