Paul Simon

Paul Simon – So Beautiful or So What (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 38:12 minutes | 828 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hear Music

Paul Simon’s 12th solo album finds the iconic songwriter (and Grammy® Lifetime Achievement Award recipient) in top form. With touches of world music, folk and pop, So Beautiful or So What offers a perfect summation of the best parts of Simon’s songwriting and delivery.

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Paul Simon – Paul Simon (1972/2010)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 43:12 minutes | 822 MB | Genre: Folk Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Legacy Recordings

If any musical justification were needed for the breakup of Simon & Garfunkel, it could be found on this striking collection, Paul Simon’s post-split debut, writes AllMusic.com. “From the opening cut, ‘Mother and Child Reunion’ (a Top 10 hit), Simon, who had snuck several subtle musical explorations into the generally conservative S&G sound, broke free, heralding the rise of reggae with an exuberant track recorded in Jamaica for a song about death. From there, it was off to Paris for a track in South American style and a rambling story of a fisherman’s son, ‘Duncan’ (which made the singles chart). But most of the album had a low-key feel, with Simon on acoustic guitar backed by only a few trusted associates (among them Joe Osborn, Larry Knechtel, David Spinozza, Mike Manieri, Ron Carter, and Hal Blaine, along with such guests as Stefan Grossman, Airto Moreira, and Stephane Grappelli), singing a group of informal, intimate, funny, and closely observed songs (among them the lively Top 40 hit ‘Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard’). It was miles removed from the big, stately ballad style of Bridge Over Troubled Water and signaled that Simon was a versatile songwriter as well as an expressive singer with a much broader range of musical interests than he had previously demonstrated.”

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Paul Simon – One-Trick Pony (1980/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 50:33 minutes | 934 MB | Genre: Folk Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Legacy Recordings

Though it was released to coincide with the opening of the film One-Trick Pony, which Paul Simon wrote and starred in, the One-Trick Pony album is not a soundtrack, as it is sometimes categorized, at least, not exactly. If it were, it might contain the Paul Simon song “Soft Parachutes” and other non-Simon music featured in the movie. Instead, this is a studio album containing many of the movie songs, some of them in the same performances (two were cut live at the Agora Club in Cleveland). The record is not billed as a soundtrack, but a sleeve note reads, “The music on this Compact Disc was created for the Paul Simon Movie ‘One-Trick Pony.’” Anyway, if Simon was in fact writing songs for Jonah, his movie character (as seems true of songs like “Jonah,” “God Bless the Absentee,” and “Long, Long Day”), he intended that character to take a somewhat less considered lyrical viewpoint than Paul Simon generally does, but to be even more enamored of light jazz fusion than Paul Simon had been on his last album, Still Crazy After All These Years. Tasty licks abound from the fretwork of Eric Gale, Hiram Bullock, and Hugh McCracken, and the rhythm section of Steve Gadd, Tony Levin, and Richard Tee is equally in the groove. This is the closest thing to a band album Simon ever made, and it contains some of his most rhythmic and energetic singing. But it is also his most uneven album, simply because the songwriting, with the exception of the title song and the ballads “How the Heart Approaches What It Yearns” and “Nobody,” is not up to his usual standard. Maybe he was too busy writing his screenplay to polish these songs to the usual gloss. (It can’t have been than Jonah wasn’t supposed to be as talented as Paul Simon. Could it?) In any case, though the album spawned a Top Ten hit in “Late in the Evening” and may have sold more copies than the film did tickets, it remained a disappointment in both artistic and commercial terms. –William Ruhlmann

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Paul Simon – In the Blue Light (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 43:52 minutes | 874 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Legacy Recordings

As the saying goes, if you want something done right, you’d better do it yourself. This is why Paul Simon entrusted the cover of his own songs to… Paul Simon! Except that Art Garfunkel’s former accomplice completely reshapes his past tracks. Ten songs in total, forgotten for the most part, handpicked from his albums There Goes Rhymin’ Simon (1973), Still Crazy After All These Years (1975), One-Trick Pony (1980), Hearts and Bones (1983), The Rhythm of the Saints (1990), You’re the One (2000) andSo Beautiful or So What (2011). By re-orchestrating them as jazz − sometimes even classical − pieces (gone with his folk and world temptations!), he folds his art flat and demonstrates how timeless his compositions are. For such a refined stylistic exercise, Simon surrounded himself with musicians as legendary as himself. Wynton Marsalis’ trumpet, Bill Frisell’s guitar, Bryce Dessner’s (from The National) arrangements, Jack DeJohnette and Steve Gadd’s drums, Joe Lovano’s saxophone, young Sullivan Fortner’s piano as well as John Patitucci’s bass further reinforce the project. But beyond this star-loaded panel, In The Blue Light truly fascinates for its unusual melancholy. At 76 years old, Paul Simon hasn’t authored a legacy piece, but rather the work of a wise man who glances in the rear-view mirror with great originality.  – Max Dembo

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Paul Simon – Hearts And Bones (1985/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 54:28 minutes | 977 MB | Genre: Folk Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Legacy Recordings

Hearts and Bones was a commercial disaster, the lowest-charting new studio album of Paul Simon’s career. It is also his most personal collection of songs, one of his most ambitious, and one of his best. It retains a personal vision, one largely devoted to the challenges of middle-aged life, among them a renewed commitment to love; the title song was a notable testament to new romance, while “Train in the Distance” reflected on romantic discord. Elsewhere, “The Late Great Johnny Ace” was his meditation on John Lennon’s murder and how it related to the mythology of pop music. Musically, Simon moved forward and backward simultaneously, taking off from the jazz fusion style of his last two albums into his old loves of doo wop and rock & roll while also incorporating current sounds with such new collaborators as dance music producer Nile Rodgers and minimalist composer Philip Glass. The result was Simon’s most impressive collection in a decade and the most underrated album in his catalog. –William Ruhlmann

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Paul Simon – Graceland (25th Anniversary Edition) (1986/2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:58 minutes | 1,39 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Legacy Recordings

In 1986, Graceland sold 14 million copies worldwide and garnered both the Album and Song of the Year Grammy in 1987. It generated three hit singles and it kept Paul Simon and the Graceland tour on the road for five years. Its music was heard across the globe. Today, its music and its reputation still reach generations of music enthusiasts yet so many are unaware of how pivotal that one album was during the 1980s, how it helped birth the idea of World Music and revived the career of one of America’s most important songwriters. Graceland’s 25th anniversary CD features the original album with bonus tracks including a unreleased tracks audio documentary produced in 2012 with Paul Simon discussing the writing, inspiration and recording of the song ‘Graceland’.

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Paul Simon – Graceland – The Remixes (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:09:43 minutes | 807 MB | Genre: Electronic
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Legacy Recordings

More than 30 years ago, Paul Simon’s Graceland blended styles of music from all across the globe into one stunning musical statement. Now, Graceland: The Remixes pairs the original songs from the album with the talents of the world’s top electronic musicians and producers, underlining the album’s continued impact in the 21st century.

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Paul Simon – Stranger To Stranger (Deluxe) (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:39 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Concord Records

Paul Simon’s Stranger to Stranger is his 13th solo album via Concord Records. Full of thrilling, imaginative textures, Stranger to Stranger conjures a vivid and vital new context to Simon’s well-established virtuosity as a singer and songwriter. The record—his first since 2011’s acclaimed So Beautiful or So What—ushers the listener into a brave new musical world where expectations are defied and exceeded, as they were thirty years ago with another masterwork,Graceland.

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