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Paul Simon, in full Paul Frederic Simon, (born October 13, 1941, Newark, New Jersey, U.S.), American singer-songwriter who brought a highbrow sensibility to rock music.

One of the most paradoxical figures in rock-and-roll history, Simon exemplified many of the principles against which the music initially reacted. From his first big hit, “The Sounds of Silence,” in 1965, Simon aspired to a self-consciously elevated poetic tone in his lyric writing that was the antithesis of rock-and-roll spontaneity. Infatuated with teenage street music in the mid-1950s, he returned throughout his career to the wellspring of dreamy doo-wop vocal harmony for inspiration and refreshment. But his approach to the style that enraptured him was analytical, as though he wanted to enshrine under glass a sound that his surreal 1983 song “René and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War” described as “deep forbidden music.”

As a teenager, Simon teamed up with his classmate from Queens, New York, Art Garfunkel, to form Simon and Garfunkel (first known as Tom and Jerry). Beginning with “The Sounds of Silence,” they were the most popular folk-pop duo of the 1960s and the musical darlings of literary-minded college-age baby boomers. In 1967 their music was a key ingredient in the success of the hit film The Graduate, and in 1970 they reached their zenith with Simon’s inspirational gospel-flavoured anthem “Bridge over Troubled Water,” which showcased Garfunkel’s soaring semi-operatic tenor.

Simon’s best early songs tended to be bookish angst-ridden reveries with simple folk rock melodies and earnest, poetically ambitious (but often mannered) lyrics, some influenced by Bob Dylan. Simon’s best narrative song from this period, “The Boxer” (1969), is the streamlined dramatic monologue of a down-and-out prizefighter.

Solo career and world music

Simon’s fascination with pop vocal sound quickly expanded to include the sparkle of English folk music, the ethereal pipes and voices of Andean mountain music, and the arching passion of gospel. After he and Garfunkel broke up in 1970 (they reunited briefly in the early 1980s for a tour and a live album), Simon pursued a successful career as a singer-songwriter of whimsical introspective songs with tricky time signatures. His biggest solo success came in 1975 with Still Crazy After All These Years, a collection of wistful ruminations on approaching middle age.

When his popularity began to ebb, Simon jumped on the emerging world-music bandwagon. On a visit to South Africa, he met many of the musicians with whom he made Graceland (1986), an exquisite multifaceted fusion of his own sophisticated stream-of-consciousness poetry with black South Africa’s doo-wop-influenced “township jive” and Zulu choral music. Although some accused him of cultural thievery—i.e., the appropriation and exploitation of another culture’s music—the album was one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful of the decade and helped put South African music on the world stage.

Simon made a similar pilgrimage to Brazil to record Rhythm of the Saints (1990), an even denser (and somewhat less popular) fusion of African-derived percussion with American folk rock. Its quirky nonlinear lyrics were indebted to the language of the Nobel Prize-winning Caribbean poet Derek Walcott. Walcott became Simon’s collaborator on The Capeman, Simon’s first Broadway musical, which opened in January 1998 and was a critical and commercial failure. Based on a highly publicized 1959 New York City murder involving a Puerto Rican street gang, The Capeman featured a score by Simon (Walcott collaborated on the lyrics) that was a theatrical elaboration of the New York street music that had originally inspired him. But it also emphasized the long-underappreciated Hispanic contribution to urban pop.

Later work and assessment

In 1999 Simon teamed with Bob Dylan for a summer tour in the United States. The concert series, which ended Simon’s eight-year absence from the road, marked the first time the two performers formally worked together. Later that year Simon continued on a solo tour, and in 2000 released You’re the One, an understated and introspective album that was a departure from the expansive sound of Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints.

Simon continued to integrate new influences into his work, and he enlisted electronic music legend Brian Eno for Surprise (2006). In addition to cowriting three of the songs on Surprise, Eno was credited with creating the album’s “sonic landscape”—a rich layering of electronic instrumentation and rhythms that complemented Simon’s lyrics. Simon followed with So Beautiful or So What (2011), an album that was billed as a return to traditional songwriting. If Still Crazy After All These Years was a thirty-something’s commentary on middle age, So Beautiful or So What was a meditation on mortality by an artist approaching his 70th birthday. Stylistically, it was something of a career retrospective, incorporating the story-song lyricism of the Simon and Garfunkel years, the African sounds of Graceland, and the pop sensibility with which he had always flirted. Stranger to Stranger (2016) was an experimental mélange of rhythmic instruments and textures that drew inspiration from eclectic composer Harry Partch. On In the Blue Light (2018), Simon reworked several of his lesser-known songs through a jazz lens.

Among songwriters of his generation, Simon enjoyed one of the longest-lasting careers as a pop innovator. Searching out and exploring the sounds of indigenous musical cultures, from Southern gospel to Brazilian and West African percussion, he integrated them into American rock and folk styles to create a highly flexible, personalized style of world music that was at once primitive and elegant. Simon was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001.

Adkins was raised by a young single mother in various working-class neighbourhoods of London. As a child, she enjoyed singing contemporary pop music and learned to play the guitar and the clarinet. However, it was not until her early teens, when she discovered rhythm-and-blues singer Etta James and other mid-20th-century performers, that she began to consider a musical career. While she honed her talents at a government-funded secondary school for the performing arts, a friend began posting songs Adkins had written and recorded onto the social networking Web site Myspace. Her music eventually caught the attention of record labels, and in 2006, several months after graduating, she signed a contract with XL Recordings.

After building anticipation in Britain with some well-received live performances, Adele (as she now billed herself) released her first album, 19, in 2008. (The title referred to the age at which she penned most of the tracks.) The recording debuted at number one on the British album chart, and critics praised Adele’s supple phrasing, her tasteful arrangements, and her ability to channel her intimate emotional experiences (especially with heartbreak) into songs that had wide resonance. She also earned comparisons to Amy Winehouse, another young British singer conspicuously influenced by soul music. (For many fans, however, Adele’s zaftig figure and down-to-earth persona made her the more-relatable star.) A performance on the television program Saturday Night Live helped introduce Adele to American audiences, and in early 2009 she won Grammy Awards for best new artist and best female pop vocal performance (for the lush bluesy song “Chasing Pavements”).

For her next album, Adele enlisted a number of songwriters and producers, including Rick Rubin, to collaborate with her. The result, 21 (2011), was a bolder and more stylistically diverse set of material, with singles ranging from the earthy gospel- and disco-inflected “Rolling in the Deep” to the affecting breakup ballad “Someone like You.” Both songs hit number one in multiple countries, and, despite a vocal-cord ailment that forced Adele to cancel numerous tour dates in 2011, the album became the biggest-selling release of the year in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Additionally, with worldwide sales of more than 20 million copies by mid-2012, it was credited with helping revive the flagging recording industry.

Following successful throat surgery, Adele performed at the 2012 Grammy Awards ceremony. She also collected six Grammy trophies, including those for album, record, and song of the year (the latter two honoured “Rolling in the Deep”). Days later she received two Brit Awards (the British equivalent of the Grammys). The sales spike for 21 after both events further confirmed the singer’s emergence as a commercial juggernaut. In 2013 Adele won the Grammy for best pop solo performance for “Set Fire to the Rain,” from her concert album Live at the Royal Albert Hall (2011), and she picked up an Academy Award for the brassy theme song she provided for the blockbuster James Bond movie Skyfall (2012). Later that year she was named a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).

Adele returned in 2015 with the album 25. Although some critics felt it did not take enough risks, Adele’s voice was no less powerful, and her ability to sell records remained undiminished. The yearning single “Hello” became a hit in numerous countries, and more than 20 million copies of the album were sold worldwide. In addition, 25 earned Adele five more Grammys, including another sweep of the top categories (album, song, and record of the year). In 2021 the singer released her fourth studio album, 30. The emotionally candid work—many of the songs deal with her divorce and its aftermath—was widely acclaimed.

Courtesy - John M. Cunningham

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Paul Simon

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