A long standing debate when looking at history is a fundamental question of whether a person was truly great or merely a product of their times. Darwin only published his theory on evolution after he found out someone else was about to publish similar findings. Does that make his place in history any less important? Was it the Time or the Man that made him important? I've heard arguments that there are very few people in the course of history that weren't just a product of the changing world around them; the names of Einstein, Freud, and Da Vinci come to mind. So what the hell does this have to do with Paul Simon's masterpiece Graceland, Roark? Simple, this is the debate that comes to mind every time I think of this recording as one of my all time favorites.
You see, someone handed me this album right after I had had my heart shattered into many enough pieces that it took me a while to find them all again. So I am forever left to ponder whether my opinion of this album is so high because of its universal musical merit or whether it stems from how it helped through a difficult time in my life. Was it the album or my own experience with it that made it important? The obvious initial response to this debate is every opinion that is conjured up to critique something is based upon your subjective experience with it. But I somehow think that this is different than, say, if a reviewer's rating on a humorous movie is lower because they just found out their wife has been cheating on them.
Correct me if I am wrong as I am remembering it from a interview I heard a long time ago, but Graceland was written and recorded not long after Paul's divorce with Carrie Fisher. Graceland became his journey out of the depression that followed. This album helped me along with my similar journey. The lyrics spoke to me at the right time. However, there is much to say about this albums universal appeal. Unless you were too busy trying to save Princess Toadstool and missed the news, Simon journeyed to South Africa to find the sound for this record. It magically blends African rhythms, sounds, and voices with his soothing voice and pop melodies. This album opened up many doors for performers seeking a worldly sound during the late eighties. The title track is by far the highlight. Its drifting chord changes resolve in such a way that to this day it still makes all the blood rush to my face when I hear it. This is also lyrically powerful song. The line "She comes back to tell me she's gone/As if I didn't know that/As if I didn't know my own bed/As if I'd never noticed/The way she brushed her hair from her forehead" absolutely killed me the first time I heard it. But that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The track, Homeless is a haunting but engaging African song that is without western instrumentation. Under African Skies is a wonderful duet with Linda Ronstadt. The track, You can call me Al, is actually quite ironic being that it soared so high on the charts as a "Fun" song, but it seems very personal and autobiographical for Simon if you really examine the lyrics. I think that is the key to the beauty of this album, that it is so personal and searching, the listener can't help but to be moved by at least one track on this album. So I guess I?m trying to argue that this was an incredibly important album in music's history. But I can't help but to think that its role in my own life events skews this too much for me to have a reasonable opinion on it.
My struggle as I look across the wide array of albums that I would select as "The Best" is affected by my own state of mind. Many believe that "Blood on the Tracks" to one of Dylan's greatest. I just picked up this album and I have been listening to it quite a bit lately. I can appreciate it for its wondrous epic story telling (...Jack of Hearts) and its piercing and brilliant lyrics of a love lost (Twist of Fate, If You See Her, Say Hello). However, I cannot identify with the songs about the loss of love as I did with Graceland purely due to the fact that I'm in a happy committed relationship. Does this subjectively make Blood on the Tracks a less important album than Graceland for me? Yes. Does it make Blood a universally less important album than Graceland? Of course not.
Part of what makes a song good is its ability to make you feel something while it entertains you. Basically, (and I borrow from Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, who in turn borrowed from many other philosophers so its okay if I borrow from him), part of this universal scale of quality is defined by its place on everyone's subjective scales of how the music and the lyrics connected with them. So sifting through all the babble spewed, all I can say is that this album will forever be one of my favorites. As for any sort of opinion on this album's importance in the overall history of music, I just don't think I'm qualified to say.
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