Paul Simon sat down with the Broken Record podcast to talk about his latest album and how his songwriting is often misinterpreted.
LISTEN NOW: Paul Simon - Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond
After believing he would never make an album again, longtime music legend Paul Simon released Seven Psalms just a month ago. And while it’s already reaching critical acclaim, Simon revealed on the latest Broken Record podcast that he never pays much attention to critics anyways.
“Some people get what I'm doing, and other people don't really get what I'm doing,” he told podcast host Malcolm Gladwell. “They still, evidently with these reviews, they still like it, maybe even like it a lot, but they don't go to the reasons that I put there.” Assumptions about his personal thoughts always miss the mark, Simon explained, especially when it comes to his songwriting. “The way that I write is, it's partly true personally, it's partly like a wish that I have, It's partly other people's lives. But it's a character,” he said. “Even though the character is me, it's not really me. It's a character.”
As reviewers analyze his music, some attribute his lyrics as if they are a direct window into his mind. But for Simon, being a lifelong songwriter means that his creativity process is not so clear cut. “The process for me is a thought that comes from someplace that I have, I don't know. Just one second it's not there, the next second it's there,” he told the podcast.
Perhaps the most compelling part of the conversation, however, wasn’t just a conversation, but when Simon brought out his guitar to demonstrate how he begins to write. Playing the beginning of his new song, “The Lord”, Simon showed how his guitar line began as an idea and developed simultaneously with the lyrics. After a verse, host Gladwell inferred, “Oh, I see. You begin with the guitar part, write the lyrics and then adapt,” to which Simon adamantly agreed. “You write something that, uh, just comes to you for reasons that you can't explain, and you start to think of what you might say over that, and when you find what you want to say, you modify the accompaniment so that it fits.”
The eighty-one year old also believes some of the most significant things in his latest album are what he describes as the “unspoken, silent conversation” within the music itself. “It's some expression of something that I hear and feel without words,” Simon explained, and continued that, “It’s as if you were sculpting a piece of wood or stone, you slice away and chip away to find the right shape.”
Ultimately, Simon crafted his Seven Psalms album as something to be decided on by each listener, and not its reviewers. To decide for yourself, check out Paul Simon on this episode of the Broken Record podcast, and on his features within the Favorite Cup radio station on the free Audacy App. Beauty is in the ear of the beholder so it seems!
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