“So Beautiful or So What,” by Paul Simon

Few pop music fans seem to realize that Paul Simon’s 2011 album, So Beautiful or So What, might very well be his best album ever. That’s right. I said it: best album ever. Seriously. Ever. But unfortunately, because it didn’t come out in 1977, and because its singles were up against the high school crap of LMFAO and Katy Perry that dominated the airwaves last year, the album went largely without notice (save for the ENTIRETY of the music critic community, who unanimously listed the album in their top ten album lists for that year). Hosting themes that reflect a man finding life “terribly strange” at seventy, So Beautiful asks questions for the angels about love, mortality, and God. And from listening to the brief album (under 40 minutes of music), one answer to these questions tap at the listener’s ear: love. Seriously, Mr. Simon? “Love?” Huh.

Simple, conventional, and persistent, Simon’s message is singular; he’s a real love-monger on this stunning album. In the tune, “Dazzling Blue,” he pays tender tribute to his marriage to (the remarkable!) Edie Brickell, and in the song, “Rewrite,” he paints a portrait of an American war veteran, who “hasn’t got a brain cell left since Vietnam,” pleading with God for a “rewrite” of his life since the war, “…Help me, help me, help me, help me – THANK YOU! I had no idea that you were there.” In the beleaguered veteran’s rewrite, love makes an appearance and ultimately redeems his life. The veteran outlines his do-over:

I'll eliminate the pages where the father has a breakdown

And he has to leave the family, but he really meant no harm.

Gonna substitute a car chase and a race across the rooftops

When the father saves the children, and he holds them in his arms…

The word “love” permeates the album, prominent in the songs titles or mentioned within the verses (or at least alluded to) on every song. On So Beautiful or So What, it’s all love, all the time. In the world Simon describes on So Beautiful, love is the mortar holding the bricks together, love is the foundation providing strength to the walls, love is the cement filling the empty holes as the musician reminds us to carefully consider our frame of reference: “Life is what you make of it,” he sings, it’s “so beautiful or so what?” I’ll take “beautiful,” thank you...

Death and growing older is another central theme on this exceptional album, and the topic is not a new one for Simon. In his mid 20’s, he reverently wrote about the prospect of growing older. In fact, Simon loosely dedicated an entire side of vinyl (side one) of the classic 1968 Simon and Garfunkel album, Bookends, to the cycle of life, most notably in the sweetly morose, “Old Friends,” in which his vocal muse and “frenemy,” Art Garfunkel sang, “Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench, quietly? How terribly strange to be seventy…” and on the side one closer, “Bookends Theme,”

Time it was, and what a time it was;

A time of innocence, a time of confidences;

Long ago, it must be…I have a photograph;

Preserve your memories;

They're all that's left you…

Musings from a young and gifted musician, romanticizing the inevitability of growing older (and exquisitely so). Are such solemn romanticisms fleeting naivety? Are they the privilege of youth? I’m starting to suspect so, as more recently, seventy year-old Simon writes of mutability from a much more dispassionate and droll, albeit musical perspective, sometimes chuckling about the prospect of passing from this mortal coil, and sometimes taking on the voice of God, Himself, pontificating on the state of humanity, on ugly politics and talk-show hosts, on the sad state of popular music, and on the origin of life, itself. Simon sings “as God,”

Big Bang. That’s a joke that I made up once

When I had eons to kill,

You know, most folks, they don’t get when I’m joking;

Maybe someday they will…

And then, of course, there’s Music. Perhaps the world’s biggest music fan, Simon has said that he picked up a guitar for the first time, because he wanted to be Elvis. And following suit, Simon almost always includes musical imagery in his more recent deliberations on nostalgia, death and the afterlife (to wit, in the early 1980’s, Simon referenced everyone from John Lennon to the “Late-Great Johnny Ace,” as well as his evocation of the treasured do-wop groups of his youth, and he also recalled Buddy Holly in the early 2000’s, and on this album, he echoed early rock-and-roll nonsense lyrics on “The Afterlife”). Simon has contemplated mutability throughout his career, but since his 40s, Simon has replaced the sentimental heartache of his youthful ruminations with humor, irony, and derision.

I suspect there’s much to be learned from this philosophical approach, and I’ve been listening to Simon’s So Beautiful or So What almost non-stop for the past few weeks. I find it wholly comforting and relevant, especially as I've recently learned a beloved family member is facing his last months, and by all accounts, he’s addressing the prospect with characteristic humor, grace, and boldness – similar to Simon’s most recent reflections. It’s humbling, his courage. I wish I had it. Maybe it comes with one’s built-in character or personality; maybe some are just born heroic, or maybe it comes from years of hard-won wisdom. Either way, at 41, I don’t have it yet. I wonder if I ever will…

"Don McLean," by Don McLean

In 1971, Don McLean released the single, “American Pie.” This classic song brimmed with imagery of the United States in the 1950’s, as well as the sadness of Buddy Holly’s premature death and McLean’s pointed, rock-and-roll commentary about “the Jester,” Elvis Presley, stealing Holly’s rightful place in the Rock-and-Roll pantheon “in a coat he borrowed from James Dean and a voice that came from you and me…” Okay, okay, so that’s just my take, and feel free to form your own position, because McLean has deftly avoided interpreting the enigmatic pop tune through decades of probing interviews, most frequently describing the meaning of the song’s cryptic lyric as, “It means I’ll never have to work again.”

Fair enough. But as you likely know, “American Pie” was ubiquitous on radio in the early 1970’s, it rocketed to number one on the Billboard charts, remaining there for 4 weeks, and it continues to be a radio staple to this day, garnering new generations of fans every year, who are drawn-in by its rock-and-roll imagery and infectious, sing-a-long chorus. In fact, the song is so revered that it’s used to close down bars at the University of Illinois, has been parodied by the wonderful Weird Al Yankovic, and was even given an electronica treatment by Madonna in 2000 (which I didn’t hate). And besides the follow-up single, the majestic, “Vincent,” a tribute to artist Vincent Van Gogh that reached #12 the following fall and McLean's “comeback” hits from a decade later, the remake of Roy Orbison’s “Crying,” #5, in 1980, and “Castles In The Air,” #12, in 1981, that’s pretty much everything pop fans know of Don McLean.

And this is the problem, since the scattered hits tell only a part of the story, and American Pie isn’t even McLean’s best album. That distinction goes to his third LP, the self-titled, Don McLean: a portrait of the artist in the wake of massive commercial success and wide critical acclaim. Backstory: when McLean recorded the American Pie LP, he was still a relatively unknown singer/songwriter, whose first album, Tapestry, failed to make a dent on the charts (even though it contained two future hits, the original version of the aforementioned, “Castles In The Air,” and the song that Perry Como turned into a hit three years after, the 1973 #29 single, “And I Love You So”). When Don McLean recorded his eponymous third album, however, the eyes of the world were watching. So how does one follow a monstrous one-two punch, like the American Pie album?

For McLean, it included writing an album about the spinning, crushing, whirlwind-lifestyle, “stoking the star-maker machinery behind the popular song.” He introduced the album with the challenging leadoff single, “Dreidel,” (#21 in 1973). The song, while a fitting description of his life in that past year, was a left-turn choice, in terms of selecting a song representative of the album. But maybe that was the point. In fact, half of the introspective Don McClean album finds the artist seeking solace from the typhoon of concerts, interviews, and television appearances that followed the behemoth success of American Pie. Themes reflect in like manner: the emptiness of show business (“Bronco Bill’s Lament,” “The Pride Parade”), love’s mutability (“Falling Through Time,” “Oh My, What A Shame”), a few tender love songs (“If We Try,” “Birthday Song”), and even a novelty remake of a 1920’s ditty (“On The Amazon”). My favorite song on the album, however, has always been “Narcissisma,” with it’s playful, silly lyrics (to wit, “…She’s got no...cryers, no pliers, no liars and no sleeves, and she will always tell you everything that she believes, she's got no belly button too, no high heeled shoe…”) and especially the sassy backing vocals by the West Forty-Forth Street Rhythm and Noise Choir.

What the album, McLean, didn’t do, however, was recreate the American Pie experience, which would have been the most fiscally-responsible choice as well as what the record-buying public expected. Instead, McLean opted to release an album that was true to his personal and artistic journey. Great art. Poor marketing potential. In fact, had McLean been released in 2011, we might have seen a few well-placed, high profile celebrity breakdowns leading up to its release. I can envision McLean visiting a Hollywood salon to borrow clippers for a self-shaved Mohawk before running off, barefoot, into a public men’s room, a public intoxication arrest or, better-yet, an “embarrassing” twitter scandal. These incidents would have beautifully set the stage for the themes included in this album, and perhaps the public would better appreciate it. But as it was, the album quietly limped its way up to #23 and only remained in the Top 40 for a paltry 7 weeks. But I guess I’m lucky. Not everybody has an older brother (hey, Jeff), who purchased the album in the late-1970’s and played it endlessly on the families' wood-grained, 3-speed stereo. For the rest of you, this sensitive, imaginative album must be discovered on your own.

**Oh, and quick, but relevant post script: McLean doesn’t ever get credit for his tremendous singing ability when, in fact, he’s a remarkable singer with tremendous vocal dexterity. And in the age of Britney / Glee / Kanye vocoder-abuse, I appreciate that so much more…