Graceland is an album released by Paul Simon in 1986. It was a hit in the UK topping the charts at #1. It also reached #3 in the US. The album won the Album of the Year Grammy award, while the title song won the Record of the Year Grammy award, for 1986 and 1987 respectively. In 2006, the album was added to the United States National Recording Registry, along with another 24 significant recordings that year. Coming at a time when Simon's musical career was at something of a low ebb following the disappointing public response to Hearts and Read Full BioGraceland is an album released by Paul Simon in 1986. It was a hit in the UK topping the charts at #1. It also reached #3 in the US. The album won the Album of the Year Grammy award, while the title song won the Record of the Year Grammy award, for 1986 and 1987 respectively. In 2006, the album was added to the United States National Recording Registry, along with another 24 significant recordings that year.
Coming at a time when Simon's musical career was at something of a low ebb following the disappointing public response to Hearts and Bones, the project was originally inspired by Simon's listening to a cassette of the Boyoyo Boys instrumental "Gumboots", lent to him by Heidi Berg, a singer-songwriter with whom Simon was working (and who would later become an award-winning jingle singer and writer). Simon later wrote lyrics to sing over a re-recording of the song, which became the fourth track on the album.
The group Los Lobos appear on the last track, "All Around the World or The Myth of Fingerprints." According to Los Lobos's saxophone player Steve Berlin, Simon stole the song from Los Lobos, giving them no songwriting credit:
"It was not a pleasant deal for us. I mean he quite literally — and in no way do I exaggerate when I say — he stole the songs from us... We go into the studio, and he had quite literally nothing. I mean, he had no ideas, no concepts, and said, "Well, let's just jam." ...Paul goes, "Hey, what's that?" We start playing what we have of it, and it is exactly what you hear on the record. So we're like, "Oh, ok. We'll share this song." ...A few months later, the record comes out and says "Words and Music by Paul Simon." We were like, "What the fuck is this?" We tried calling him, and we can't find him. Weeks go by and our managers can't find him. We finally track him down and ask him about our song, and he goes, "Sue me. See what happens."
Paul Simon answered: "I just said at this stage I don't care whether the album comes out without Los Lobos on it. I was getting really tired of it—I don't want to get into a public slanging match over this, but this thing keeps coming up. So we finished the recordings. And three months passed, and there was no mention of 'joint writing.' The album came out and we heard nothing. Then six months passed and Graceland had become a hit and the first thing I heard about the problem was when my manager got a lawyer's letter. I was shocked. They sent this thing to my manager, not me. If there was a problem, they could have contacted me direct. They've got my home number; we talked a lot. If you ask me, it was a lawyer's idea. You know, 'The record's a hit, and there's $100,000 in it.' They had nine months from the recordings to talk to me about all this, but I heard nothing. And it's still not sorted out, because they still keep bringing it up—I heard they'd done this interview for you. I don't want to get into a public slanging match with them, because I really like their music."
Graceland was Paul Simon's highest charting album in the U.S. in over a decade, reaching #3 in the national Billboard charts, receiving a certification of 5× Platinum by the RIAA and eventually selling over 14 million copies, making it the singer's most commercially successful album. Critics welcomed its eclectic mix of sounds and broad, quirky subject matter and it regularly shows up in critic polls and "recommended" lists. The album also helped to draw worldwide attention to the music of South Africa.
In the Graceland Classic Albums video, Simon states that he considers the title track the best song he has ever written. A popular music video starring Simon and Chevy Chase was made for the hit song "You Can Call Me Al". Simon toured the album extensively, featuring many of the artists from the album in addition to exiled South Africans Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba. Two concerts in Harare, Zimbabwe, were filmed in 1987 for release as "The African Concert". The audience was a multi-racial mix with many travelling from South Africa.
Rankings:
* Voted the best album of the year in The Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll.
* In 1998, Q magazine readers voted it the 56th greatest album of all time.
* It was also ranked #84 in a 2005 survey held by British television's Channel 4 to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time.
* In 1989, it was rated #5 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Albums of the '80s.
* It is #81 on the list of Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
* The song "Graceland" was voted #485 in the list of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
* According to AcclaimedMusic.net, a site which combines hundreds of best-of lists from critics and musicians from around the world, Graceland is ranked at #66 on the greatest albums of all time. It is also ranked #13 for albums released in the 1980s, and it is the second-highest ranking album of 1986, behind The Smiths' The Queen Is Dead).
* In 2002, Pitchfork Media named it the 85th best album of the 1980s.
* In 2006, Time named it one of the All-Time 100 Greatest Albums.
Coming at a time when Simon's musical career was at something of a low ebb following the disappointing public response to Hearts and Bones, the project was originally inspired by Simon's listening to a cassette of the Boyoyo Boys instrumental "Gumboots", lent to him by Heidi Berg, a singer-songwriter with whom Simon was working (and who would later become an award-winning jingle singer and writer). Simon later wrote lyrics to sing over a re-recording of the song, which became the fourth track on the album.
The group Los Lobos appear on the last track, "All Around the World or The Myth of Fingerprints." According to Los Lobos's saxophone player Steve Berlin, Simon stole the song from Los Lobos, giving them no songwriting credit:
"It was not a pleasant deal for us. I mean he quite literally — and in no way do I exaggerate when I say — he stole the songs from us... We go into the studio, and he had quite literally nothing. I mean, he had no ideas, no concepts, and said, "Well, let's just jam." ...Paul goes, "Hey, what's that?" We start playing what we have of it, and it is exactly what you hear on the record. So we're like, "Oh, ok. We'll share this song." ...A few months later, the record comes out and says "Words and Music by Paul Simon." We were like, "What the fuck is this?" We tried calling him, and we can't find him. Weeks go by and our managers can't find him. We finally track him down and ask him about our song, and he goes, "Sue me. See what happens."
Paul Simon answered: "I just said at this stage I don't care whether the album comes out without Los Lobos on it. I was getting really tired of it—I don't want to get into a public slanging match over this, but this thing keeps coming up. So we finished the recordings. And three months passed, and there was no mention of 'joint writing.' The album came out and we heard nothing. Then six months passed and Graceland had become a hit and the first thing I heard about the problem was when my manager got a lawyer's letter. I was shocked. They sent this thing to my manager, not me. If there was a problem, they could have contacted me direct. They've got my home number; we talked a lot. If you ask me, it was a lawyer's idea. You know, 'The record's a hit, and there's $100,000 in it.' They had nine months from the recordings to talk to me about all this, but I heard nothing. And it's still not sorted out, because they still keep bringing it up—I heard they'd done this interview for you. I don't want to get into a public slanging match with them, because I really like their music."
Graceland was Paul Simon's highest charting album in the U.S. in over a decade, reaching #3 in the national Billboard charts, receiving a certification of 5× Platinum by the RIAA and eventually selling over 14 million copies, making it the singer's most commercially successful album. Critics welcomed its eclectic mix of sounds and broad, quirky subject matter and it regularly shows up in critic polls and "recommended" lists. The album also helped to draw worldwide attention to the music of South Africa.
In the Graceland Classic Albums video, Simon states that he considers the title track the best song he has ever written. A popular music video starring Simon and Chevy Chase was made for the hit song "You Can Call Me Al". Simon toured the album extensively, featuring many of the artists from the album in addition to exiled South Africans Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba. Two concerts in Harare, Zimbabwe, were filmed in 1987 for release as "The African Concert". The audience was a multi-racial mix with many travelling from South Africa.
Rankings:
* Voted the best album of the year in The Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll.
* In 1998, Q magazine readers voted it the 56th greatest album of all time.
* It was also ranked #84 in a 2005 survey held by British television's Channel 4 to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time.
* In 1989, it was rated #5 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Albums of the '80s.
* It is #81 on the list of Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
* The song "Graceland" was voted #485 in the list of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
* According to AcclaimedMusic.net, a site which combines hundreds of best-of lists from critics and musicians from around the world, Graceland is ranked at #66 on the greatest albums of all time. It is also ranked #13 for albums released in the 1980s, and it is the second-highest ranking album of 1986, behind The Smiths' The Queen Is Dead).
* In 2002, Pitchfork Media named it the 85th best album of the 1980s.
* In 2006, Time named it one of the All-Time 100 Greatest Albums.
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The Boy in the Bubble
Paul Simon Lyrics
It was a slow day
And the sun was beating
On the soldiers by the side of the road
There was a bright light
A shattering of shop windows
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry, baby, don't cry
Don't cry
It was a dry wind
And it swept across the desert
And it curled into the circle of birth
And the dead sand
Falling on the children
The mothers and the fathers
And the automatic earth
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all, oh yeah
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby, don't cry
Don't cry
It's a turn-around jump shot
It's everybody jump start
It's every generation throws a hero up the pop charts
Medicine is magical and magical is art
Think of the boy in the bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart
And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all, oh yeah
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby, don't cry
Don't cry, don't cry
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: Forere Motlhoheloa, Paul Simon
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
To comment on specific lyrics, highlight them
Evan J
@Laura Swaager Greetings from California in the US! That's so amazing to hear that after all this time, Graceland still has this magical affect on people!
Being 6 when Graceland came out makes me 41 now. Time goes fast!
I became a bass player because of "Graceland." At first I didn't even know what that sound was because it was so different. I thought it was some sort of horn. When I first saw Bakithi Kumalo playing those lines, I said to myself "I want to be that guy."
I too can play Diamond on the Souls of Her Shoes, but the fretless bass part ;)
I did get to see Paul Simon perform with Bakithi a few years ago in LA. Even more recently I got to see and meet some of the members of the legendary Ladysmith Black Mumbazo. What a performance that was.
Paul Simon always will be one of my favorite artists because how how many times he's re-invented himself and how many times he's brought certain musical styles to the forefront. The elegance of something like "American Tune" is staggering to me. He's done something interesting every decade of his career and I often think his newest stuff is just as interesting as the music he was doing with Art Garfunkel in the 60s. With Jimmy Cliff and also the Swampers in the 70s and with all the South African artists in the 80s. I really cannot think of any musician with as long of a career who continues to wow me with their current work.
It's good to know I'm not alone! What a pleasure talking with you this was.
PAISLEY PRINCESS
This song, this music concert, the whole Graceland album brings back so many happy memories. My mom saw this special on cable and she went wild. She never heard African music in her life, and she went right out and bought this tape. She listened to it so much she wore it out. This album made her so happy. RIP mom
PAISLEY PRINCESS
@mikron Somewhat. I think Paul Simon was the kind of artist who preferred to play it safe to some degree...Graceland was a huge risk because, although it wasn’t political, it had the backdrop of apartheid and the oppression of the artists. They couldn’t even tour in SA. Prince was never conservative with anything he did
mikron
Paul Simon reminds me of Prince in many ways - the way he ran his career and hi approach to music making. He took songwriting seriously and had great intuition as to what would work and just did it with the right musicians who would make it work. Prince was like that, too.
Barbapou Pokin
💜💙💜💙💜💙
Oluchi Juzie
May her soul rest in peace. 🙏
Dr. Kaye L
BBC v
Valerie Curtis
Graceland is definitely one of the greatest albums ever recorded.
tyler comeaux
Agreed
John Wright
Without a doubt Valerie....
Henry Ijeoma
@ToldoMexes yessssssssss! Paul Simon fans never show that album love