But it’s still not really a ‘protest’ song. Paul Simon has never considered himself an overtly political songwriter, and in a 2011 American Songwriter interview he acknowledges that “American Tune” may come closest to that. In addition, its stately chord progression provides a gravitas completely in keeping with the song’s subject matter. While some find the tune to be somewhat mournful for a song that celebrates America, its cadences generally fit the weariness of Simon’s lyrics as well as the air of melancholy that the song suggests. As he suggests, Simon altered the melody and harmonic progression, making his use of the song every bit as legitimate as Bach’s. Matthew Passion, and is itself a resetting of a much earlier song “Mein G’müt ist mir verwirret,” composed by Hans Leo Hassler. The tune is based on Bach’s setting of a hymn “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” from his St. And the melody was just ‘there’ since 1968 in my head.Īnd then this year I decided to write it again, but I did take a part of that melody and incorporate it into Bridge over Troubled Waters, just a part of it, and so you are correct in noticing that there’s a similarity in the harmonic structure between the two.” And the album, of course, it never came to pass, we never recorded it. And Artie said ‘listen to this melody, ’cause it’s really good, and try to write a lyric to it for Christmas.’ So I listened to it, and it was a beautiful melody. So we were looking for different material. We didn’t want to do ‘Silent Night’ and those things. We were going to do a Christmas album, and we didn’t want to do the standard Christmas repertoire. Now Bach took the melody from…it was a Lutheran hymn that was popular at the time, and he took it and he incorporated the melody.Īnd I first heard it and…in fact, it was Art Garfunkel who first showed it to me in 1968.
I first heard…part of the melody, it’s St. This composer, who played Elton John to Simon’s Bernie Taupin on this song, was none other than Johann Sebastian Bach. Paul Simon had a collaborator on “American Tune,” one who wrote the beautiful, stately melody of the song almost note for note. That’s not bad for a song of its depth and seriousness, but consider that it took a performer of Paul Simon’s status in 1973 to move a song like that to a singles chart position of #35. “American Tune” was also a single, and it reached #35, giving it Top Forty status. That album was more successful than its predecessor, Paul Simon, reaching #2 on the Billboard 200 chart, and it spawned hit singles in “Kodachrome” and “Loves Me Like a Rock.” “American Tune” was recorded and released on his incredibly successful third solo LP T here Goes Rhymin’ Simon.
Simon and his partner Art Garfunkel had recorded some of the most deeply felt songs of the late 1960s: “Sounds of Silence,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “The Boxer.” When the duo broke up in 1970 Simon continued to record as a solo artist and he continued to write songs that cut to the heart of what those of his generation were feeling as the dream engendered in the freedom and chaos of the ’60s began to degenerate. Paul Simon, 1976 performance of “An American Dream” Paul Simon wasn’t really just a songwriter at the time he wrote “American Tune.” He was one of a handful of writers who, taken together, formed a voice that was perceived and accepted as the voice of that generation at that time and in that place. There is some truth to Hilburn’s statement but it ignores some information about the popular music industry in the 1960s and 70s as well as some simple facts about Paul Simon and his place in that industry in 1973. ” I can’t imagine if somebody in their 20s wrote that today: Would they ignore it, because people aren’t looking for thoughtful songs?” Robert Hilburn, the author of Paul Simon: The Life, has commented that Simon’s ‘Nixon impeachment song’ as the artist has called it, was written at a time when songwriters were in the ascendancy in popular music. In a fine essay published in the LA Times over the July 4th holiday, staff writer Jeffrey Fleishman discussed the way that the song serves as “the anthem for our troubled nation. I’m not the first to notice the way that Paul Simon’s “American Tune” reflects the times we are living in as deeply today as it did when it was written, recorded, and released in 1973.
AMERICAN TUNE SIMON AND GARFUNKEL SERIES
New Directions in Music Song Remains the Same Series
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