Paul Simon (born October 13, 1941,Newark,New Jersey, U.S.) is an Americansinger-songwriter who brought a highbrow sensibility torockmusic.

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 theantithesis of rock-and-roll spontaneity. Infatuated with teenage street music in the mid-1950s, he returned throughout his career to the wellspring of dreamydoo-wop vocal harmony for inspiration and refreshment. But his approach to the style that enraptured him wasanalytical, as though he wanted to enshrine under glass a sound that hissurreal 1983song “René and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War” described as “deep forbidden music.”

Simon and Garfunkel

As a teenager, Simon teamed up with his classmate fromQueens,New York,Art Garfunkel, to formSimon 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 hitfilmThe 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.

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

Solo career and world music

Simon’s fascination with popvocal sound quickly expanded to include the sparkle of Englishfolk music, theethereal pipes and voices of Andean mountain music, and the arching passion ofgospel. 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 withStill Crazy After All These Years, a collection ofwistful ruminations on approachingmiddle age.

When his popularity began to ebb, Simon jumped on the emergingworld-music bandwagon. On a visit toSouth Africa, he met many of the musicians with whom he madeGraceland (1986), anexquisite multifaceted fusion of his own sophisticated stream-of-consciousness poetry with black South Africa’s doo-wop-influenced “township jive” and Zuluchoral 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 SouthAfrican music on the world stage.

Simon made a similar pilgrimage to Brazil to recordRhythm 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 theNobel Prize-winning Caribbean poetDerek Walcott. Walcott became Simon’s collaborator onThe Capeman, Simon’s first Broadway musical, which opened in January 1998 and was a critical and commercial failure. Based on a highly publicized 1959New York City murder involving a Puerto Ricanstreet gang,The Capeman featured a score by Simon (Walcottcollaborated 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.

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Later work and assessment

In 1999 Simon teamed withBob Dylan for a summer tour in theUnited 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 releasedYou’re the One, an understated and introspective album that was a departure from the expansive sound ofGraceland andRhythm of the Saints.

Simon continued tointegrate new influences into his work, and he enlistedelectronic musiclegendBrian Eno forSurprise (2006). In addition to cowriting three of the songs onSurprise, 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 withSo Beautiful or So What (2011), an album that was billed as a return to traditional songwriting. IfStill 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 ofGraceland, 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 fromeclectic composerHarry Partch. OnIn 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 ofindigenous musicalcultures, from Southern gospel to Brazilian and West African percussion, heintegrated them into American rock and folk styles to create a highly flexible, personalized style ofworld music that was at once primitive and elegant. Simon was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001.