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August 12, 2011
Graceland: Pop Classic or Boring Dinner-Party Soundtrack?
On the twenty-fifth anniversary of Paul Simon's biggest success, we settle the debate, once and for all.
By Michael Edison Hayden and Stephen Deusner
Graceland is a terrible album
By Michael Edison Hayden, GQ
1986 was a good year for pop music. In England, New Order's Brotherhood gave birth to the spiritual club anthem "Bizarre Love Triangle," The Pet Shop Boys released the lush, satirical Please, and The Smiths released their romantic masterpiece, The Queen is Dead. In America, dead-end white communities found a voice for Reagan-era feelings of neglect with Slayer's Reign in Blood, Janet Jackson tangled pop airwaves with black female eroticism and feminism in Control, and Run-D.M.C. infused a sense of moral urgency into rap with the near-perfect Raising Hell. With so many fascinating '86 albums to revisit, why has Paul Simon's politically impotent co-option of African rhythms, Graceland, seen such a large critical resurgence in recent years?
In 2002, hipster music bible Pitchfork put Graceland on its "top 100 albums of the 1980s," praising the album's influences of "Zulu mabazo choral music, zydeco, and country." Never mind that the correct name of the style is "mambazo," and, years later, the careless misspelling remains firmly linked to the website's front page. That typo actually points to one of Graceland's main artistic failings. The record evokes the feeling of having had some kind of profound, exotic experience; it never does the dirty work of expressing what that experience is. Unsurprisingly, no actual "zydeco," "country," or "Zulu mambazo choral music" albums made Pitchfork's list of the 100 greatest albums of the 1980s.
It's a passive album with as much cultural profundity as you might find during "diversity day" at an MFA writing program.
Throughout the aughts, Graceland's adult-contempo album cover was on proud display at many dinner parties. It had gone from a record that was considered cringe-worthy by indie fans for Raffi-esque singles like "You Can Call Me Al," to something you'd tell other people you liked to indicate your sophistication. Graceland had become, in a word, fashionable. The zenith of the record's resurgence arrived in 2008 when Columbia University's Vampire Weekend released their goofy debut. The self-titled album strongly evoked Graceland's defanged Afro-pop; the album cover, appropriately, featured several faceless blonde girls mingling underneath a fancy chandelier.
Listen: "You Can Call Me Al"
If America is going to matter culturally, records like Graceland need to be cast into the dustbin of history. It's a passive album with as much cultural profundity as you might find during "diversity day" at an MFA writing program. The record, while indeed performed by a multi-ethnic cast, was written for wealthy, white adults (like Simon himself) who prefer to ignore the urgency of everyday life that is rapidly catching up the rest of us in 2011's broken economy. The song "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes," with its flat stereotypes and blithely sung vocals, ranks among the most infuriatingly empty meditations on class in the American songbook.
Listen: "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes"
If you're looking for a less one-sided multicultural collaboration that does manage to say something about race and class, stay far away from this album. Instead, download De La Soul's collaboration track with Teenage Fanclub, "Fallin'", from 1993's all-but-forgotten Judgment Night soundtrack. And to those who have elevated Graceland to its current critical status as one of the most important albums of the 1980s, I quote: "You played yourself."
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Paul Simon
Commentarium (65 Comments)
So in other words: Is Paul Simon's Graceland pretentious or not? That seems to be the real argument, or at the very least: is it culturally relevant or not? This has nothing to do with whether or not the music was sonically good. Surely, for something to be a pop classic or not, pretension and cultural relevance don't tip the scales. Someone just honestly tell why they did or didn't like the record. How did it make you feel? Why did it connect with you, or why didn't it?
Totally agree. I don't doubt that the music was popular among middle-class whites, and there are issues with Simon co-opting African music....but he made an album of beautiful songs that resonated with a lot of people. I see the issues of whether art is politically problematic, and whether it is emotionally resonant, as two mostly separate things.
IMO, 'infuriatingly empty' is a pretty clear answer to both why it did or didn't connect and what if any feelings came across.
First, arguing about what music you like is like arguing what you want for supper. Spare the snark.
By the early 80s A LOT of white middle class people had embraced African music - f'r cryin' out loud esp. NY hipster types. Seeing King Sunny Ade in '83 sure changed my life. Graceland was pretty controversial when it was released (Does the Village Voice archive their reviews online yet?), over things that seemed to matter then, like Linda Ronstadt singing harmony.
But not only has Graceland worn well, it's in the middle of Simon's great trifecta of Hearts and Bones ('83; some think it his best), Graceland ('86; ditto) and Rhythm of the Saints ('90'; ditto). It's really not any more or less pretentious than all of his works, going back to '65. What's great about Simon is he is still fishing for pearls, and he never abandoned his African or his South American and other acquired sensibilities.
Listen to Bridge Over Troubled Water (like El Condo Pasa [If I Could] ), or his first solo album and some of the cuts there and then contemplate how he kept pushing from a long way back.
It's pretentious. Simon's lyrics tends to be on the pretentious side, like he want us to think everything he writes is incredibly clever and we should feel dumb for not getting it or liking it.
1st week of October, 1987, Istanbul youth hostel, the one next door to the Aya Sofia. There are two cassettes in continuous rotation, Simon's Graceland and Zamfir's greatest hits (on the pan-pipes). Thank God for Graceland!
Fuck Graceland. Give me some Fela Kuti any day.
Fuck Fela Kuti. Give me some Fella Tio any day.
I have never once thought of the album as defined by "You Can Call Me Al." I do like "The Boy in the Bubble" and "Gumboots."
But I believe I bought "The Indestructible Beat of Soweto" at about the same time and it's an infinitely better album. And as far as Westerners-visiting-Africa musical ventures go, Henry Kaiser and David Lindley's material from Madagascar is vastly superior to "Graceland."
Give me a fucking break. Paul Simon "borrowed" from so many sources in every album. Are you a musician? Because who doesn't? Do you notice the OBVIOUS influence of Ska in "Cecilia"?
Simon "borrowed" so much from African culture on "Geaceland". Ask Herbie Hanckok's "Watermelon Man". Or read Leon Grumbull's "The Forest People".
I got an idea...Record your own album and tell me your Indie Rock bullshit owes nothing to no one.
Are you fucking kidding me? Do you hear the obvious influence of ska on "Cecilia"?
Are you a musician? Have you asked Herbie Hancock about "Watermelon Man"? Or read Leon Trumbull's "The Forest People"? Go record your own indie Rick bullshit and tell me you owe nothing too no one.
Okay, so an album filled with great songs beautifully performed by great musicians which introduced the masses to some of the giants of South African music and helped popularize the genre of world music belongs in the dustbin of history? Really?
Your heads are so firmly up each others' asses you have flushed yourselves down the toilet of smarmy ignorance. Fucking idiots.
Agreed. I unapologetically love Graceland.
Actually the "World Music" genre was quite popular. Miriam Makeba, King Sunny Ade and Hugh Masekela were already established and respected musicians, with Masekela even turning in a killer performance in 1967's Monterey Pop festival. But what do I know? My head's too far up someone else's ass to call bullshit on Graceland. Pity.
It's no pity. Perhaps being an asshead will prevent you from writing any more tripe.
The entire "Graceland sucks" argument is based on whether or not its poaching of some African sounds and talent was sincere enough, while contrasting it with six other ferociously, if unintentionally, monochromatic records that both at their release and 25 years sit firmly and comfortably within pretty narrow canons. All six sound dated as fuck in conception, performance, and production, while outside of one keyboard sound "Graceland" stands up very well.
David Byrne and Peter Gabriel did the world a huge disservice in the 80s by making the appreciation of world musics by Western English-speaking audiences come from this silly place where it became an aspirational signifier of taste and had to have this goofy sort of white-guilt reverence about it. This is strictly a one-way attitude. No one in Africa worries about whether they are copping Jimmy Page's guitar tones with the appropriate reverence.
However, the idea that "Graceland" is indirectly responsible for Vampire Weekend is a compelling argument for a CD-microwaving party.
Pretentious or not, Simon did break the anti-apartheid cultural boycott then in place and was directly responsible for South African acts breaking out into the global mainstream. Acts like Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Ray Phiri and Stimela have a lot to thank him for. The only band that really broke prior to this was Johnny Clegg and Juluka, now a staple of white South African dinner parties whenever anyone from a "diverse" background is in attendance.
Mr. Hayden lost me with the bit about the "Reagan-era feelings of neglect". I think he's overthinking things a bit.
Ever listen to Reign in Blood? It's pretty bleak.
I always thought it was primarily about avoiding a creative rut and gaining a fresh perspective so that he could deliver more compelling music in addition the the mass of popular work he had already created.
It's always been interesting to me how at some point in the seventies Simon's lyrics and delivery moved from the hyper-intellectual style of 'The Sound of Silence,' 'Scarborough Fair,' and 'Richard Corey' ('with apologies to Edwin Arlington Robinson') to a jivey stream of consciousness thing where the phrases and imagery seem to have been gleaned from a street corner or from nowehere at all.
And that signifies the same trend as his move to world music influences--pursuing creativity by consciously moving away from the familiar and from the established, and perhaps coming to prize as the ultimate goal the creation of something that has no precedent, that comes from nowhere at all.
But life is more complex than that, and it is true that embracing world music and ethnicities was a popular trend of the time.
All this bloviating! Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. If you don't like an album or a song it's probably because don't know how to listen to it.
Or maybe it's because you don't like it.
I don't like this album. I didn't like it when it came out, I like it even less now. I don't claim this as a political statement. I just. Don't. Like it.
'You Can Call Me Al'...wasn't that a Chevy Chase song?
LOL
to sum it all up: you like it or you don't. now let's move on!
It was kind of interesting to hear at the time, but I haven't listened to it in 20 plus years and really haven't missed hearing it at all.
On the plus side, at least the lyrics aren't as pretentious as the following lines (from Simon and Garfunkel's "The Dangling Conversation"): "And you read your Emily Dickinson/And I my Robert Frost/And we note out place with bookmarkers/That measure what we've lost".
I know he was young when he wrote those lyrics, but damn, that is some pretentious drivel.
That being said, Simon has written some classic songs.
It's the "Myth of Fingerprints," not "fingertips." Come on. Also, too, zydeco is from Lafayette, not New Orleans.
And this is my favorite album of all time. You know what's even better? The DVD of the Graceland concert in Harare in 1987, with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Hugh Masakela, Miriam Makeba, and more. That concert just kills me every time.
Haters gonna hate. Graceland is timeless.
This tired argument that Paul Simon "co-opted" African music by making Graceland is complete and utter bullshit with absolutely no basis in fact. In the mid-80s, Simon's solo career was, for all intents and purposes, dead. He had recently put out a movie (One Trick Pony) and an album (Hearts and Bones), which were total commercial failures. Then someone gave him a tape of South African music and he fell in love with it so he went to South Africa to play with the musicians themselves. Eventually, an album came out of that. In Simon's own words, "Nobody thought that was a good idea." He never said to himself "Hmm, I need to revitalize my career with some world music....I know! I'll go to South Africa and appropriate the local music, put out an album, and make myself millions of dollars."
(This info comes from a PBS documentary on Simon.)
Obviously the author didn't bother to do actual research (other than reading Pitchfork) on anything about Simon's career, the actual making of Graceland, or the effect of its release. As someone mentioned previously, Simon broke the cultural boycott in place in South Africa when he chose to bring his band there and let them play in their home country. THAT is political potency, completely opposite the author's accusation that Graceland is "politically impotent." He didn't hurt South Africa by making Graceland, he made millions of Americans sit up and take notice of a country they'd been ignoring up to that point.
Speaking of impotence, this piece reads like a sniveling, musically impotent, overly-intellectualized rant by some guy holding his weak, white finger up trying to track the pulse of other white critic's opinions of an album whose real significance and meaning has utterly passed him by.
Hi, I'll quickly respond to two things here: 1) I never suggested that Paul Simon in any way hurt South Africa. The question is not what boundaries were broken in the recording of the album but what the album says to a contemporary audience, 25 years later. Clearly, no one 'consciously' co-opts a tradition of ethnic or world music. But it's still possible that someone with good intentions nevertheless does exactly that. 2) You make the assumption that I self-identify as a white male. Why is that?
The last question I'm asking out of curiosity. ;)
KJ - Thank you for writing what I was thinking! Good research and nice response.
I also don't get the whole argument about "co-opting a tradition of ethnic music". My impression is that musicians love to share music with each other and play together, it crosses cultures. What is this evil "co-opting" and how did it hurt someone? From what I remember and what I've just read, it only helped the musicians involved.
As for whether the album is still speaking to people 25 years later - I still love it, and many of my friends do also.
RB, my primary point was not about the danger of co-option. It's about why this album has been praised so highly. And I don't, for the record, self-identify as white.
STILL listen to it, front t' back; the premise, as presented, is pretentious...and I've read this article TWICE now. Expected better of NERVE...
For his part, it has to be noted 1) Simon paid the musicians TRIPLE what they would've made 2) Joseph Shabalala, lead vocal of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, has explicitly defended Paul from some of the more strident attacks back then. THIS tepid response -- 25 years later -- doesn't even come CLOSE to the vitriol spewed by some of the black community. 3) Miriam Makeba and/or Hugh Masakela both ALSO defended Simon, even going so far as saying that as the viciousness of the apartheid regime was exposed, this album, the HBO concert, were quite a "mambazos" (axes) that help strike at the heart of this system. You took the historical significance of this album COMPLETELY out of its contextual meaning at the time.
One wonders if the author dares "to eat a peach", to borrow from Eliot; THIS article CERTAINLY lacks the teeth to do so!
I really liked the album. I liked the upbeat nature of it, that it was new from Paul Simon. It was the first I had listened to him in years. I had been listening to a lot of Dylan's Christian music, I had been listening to sanskrit kirtana. Of course there was Bruce Springsteen and Melissa Etheridge. It was just so unrocky, if you know what I mean, like listening to symphonies. It was different and intellectual in that way that Simon and Simon & Garfunkel were. Living in the Southern Baptist south in the age of Reagan maybe I really loved hearing the New York I came from, without all the critics and so forth, just good music floating down from the sky. I bought the CD some years after the record was made and I enjoyed it. Calling me Al, echoing the funny line from Saturday Night Live by some comedian I have forgotten who said, "you can call me rayjay or you can call me ajay but you doesn't have to call me Johnson." Bob Dylan also had some thing about what he could be called. Do they call him Timmy?
I don't know, but it was a good upbeat album and not just a single put to video on MTV. It reflected some depth and thinking and I liked it very much.
You know what should be tossed on the dustbin or history? The attitude that a work of art has to have a proper moral message. That attitude is fine if you're a marxist or a fundamentalist Christian, but it has no place in a democratic society. You can like or dislike "Graceland" as you please, but "politically impotent" is not a valid criticism.
While we're at it, how about discarding the notion that we can criticize a work of art based on its presumed audience?
Hi, I'll be happy to respond to this comment. I never advocated that an album must have a proper moral message. I said that Run DMC's album had a sense of moral urgency and that made it very exciting (to me). But I praised other albums for different reasons. Re: Politically impotent, two things. A) I believe that no work of art is without political content, intentional or otherwise. B) When an album is filled from top to bottom with African influences, the artist should be aware of the social and political subtext, no? Graceland, I believe, wants to be a political statement of some kind and should be examined in those terms. Re: presumed audience, I have no problem with anyone liking any album. I'm questioning why it's still so critically praised. The fact that this album is so ubiquitous on lists, etc. is indicative that its audience has more influence than, say, the Janet Jackson album I mentioned, Control.
It's good to discuss these things.
If you insist that any work of art has a political content, "intentional or otherwise", you are either insisting that it have a proper political content or declaring that politics is irrelevant. You're judging Graceland on the political agenda you wish that it had, and find it lacking.
Certainly making an album in South Africa in the mid-80s is a political act, intentional or otherwise. But it seems pretty clear that a) the intention wasn't there, and b) the album is not a political album. If you read interviews with Simon about the genesis of the album, it's very clear that he was excited to discover township music. He was excited not because it gave voice to an oppressed people, but because it was "cool". He expresses surprise at discovering that the accordion could be sound cool. He didn't make the album because he wanted to make a statement about the situation in South Africa, he made the album because he was excited about music again, because he was excited by this particular music. And that's a good thing; if you want a political album about the evils of apartheid, turn to a South African, not an American. (and if you want a political album by Simon, go listen to the underrated soundtrack to The Capeman).
This leads directly into why the album is widely praised, and widely listened to, at dinner parties and elsewhere. First, the music is great. Whether this is because Simon is a great composer or simply has excellent taste in township tunes, the songs are great. Second, Simon was inspired by his encounter with the musicians of South Africa to match the songs with great lyrics. The writing on Graceland is more whimsical, abstract, and (for lack of a better word) angular than his previous work (and I say that as a big fan of "Hearts and Bones"). His writing on this album reminds me of Kandinsky's painting. The energetic collision of these two art forms, the township music and Simon's loose but intellectual writing style, is what makes Graceland a classic.
I appreciate your thoughtful defense of the record. Criticism is not an absolute fact but it can help open up a discussion.
Graceland reminds you of Kandinsky's paintings. It reminds me of the film Dances with Wolves. ;)
Re: Politics.
Just so you're clear on what I mean, it's not an artists job necessarily to be conscious of the political statement he or she is making. But that does not mean that everything work of art both old and new, high-brow and low-brow (if you believe such distinctions exist) doesn't say something about the immediate situation in which we live.
My dad was an aid worker. I grew up in Zambia; lived 1983-1985 as a teenager in Lesotho. All it takes is the first few bars of "I know what I know," and I've got instant childhood. That's all I judge this album on. (And alurin is right that judging an album on its moral message is total BS.)
I've given up worrying about what other people think of the music I like. If you don't like it, don't listen to it.
Haters gon hate.
So it's "fashionable" now, and is thus unfashionable. Highly exaggerated political musings aside, it's a strong album, full of songs that are well written, well produced, and beautifully arranged. Lyrically, it can be stunning. If you go into it trying to write a scathing review for your high strung website -- you'll find plenty of bullshit there, but that goes for anything. Of all the albums that actually -do- belong in the "dustbin of history" (I can't believe I actually just typed that shit) this isn't one of them. There's no accounting for taste though I suppose, even silly venomous taste.
Simon, a master of melody, THE master of melody in the sixties, casually stated that he created the backing tracks and sang improv over the beats to create the songs on Graceland. Not the best way to achieve what he had done so well so long ago.
Graceland is shite
Ahhh, fahgeddaboudit. I recant my testimony. Never posht drunk! I looooooorve Gracelens!
Thank you for fixing the incorrect song titles.
So what happened to, 'If it sounds good, it IS good.' Critics should leave music the fuck alone, case in point: atonalism. If you want to tell people what is good and what is not, become an art critic. That form of expression was lost to critics long ago.
Leave atonalism alone!!!
Mr. Hayden:
You are entitled to your opinion.I think you are wildly inaccurate. I don't give a fuck about what people in the 80s thought about Graceland, and I don't care whose music you think it rips off without capturing the soul/essence of said genre. Graceland (along with So, A Decade of Steely Dan, the Stone's Rewind, Moondance, Sketches of Spain, Cry Like a Rainstorm, Infidels, A Quiet Normal Life, and Little Village) was one of the formative albums of my life, and it remains (along with Decade, Sketches, Moondance, Illmatic, Distant Relatives, Midnight Maurauders, Golden Heart, Mercury Falling, and Illadelph Halflife) one of the few albums I am happy to listen to all the way through at any time under any circumstances. So you can take your overly nit-picking sensibilities and go jump in a lake.
At dinner parties that I've attended, the soundtrack was either baroque, jazz, or Enya. Maybe I'm going to the wrong dinner parties.
Graceland has been a favorite since the day I first heard it, but I really haven't heard much talk of it since. Different dinner party scenes, I suspect. Still, it's always nice to find out one is hip and edgy again, even if it also suddenly makes me a pretentious douchebag.
It's the kind of vibe I get a lot from reading Nerve.com, I notice.
I adore Graceland, amazing beats, lots of fun.. It's not the "Child of Africa" sing that Russell Brand makes fun of in the movies.
You people think too much.
I like to play Orchestra Baobab for dinner parties. Do you think that would ever have happened if not for Graceland?
You lost me at your claim that 1986 was a good year based on New Order's Brotherhood. That was when they started to slide into irrelevance after three great releases in a row. True they had their biggest single with BLT, but I think that owes more to MTV than the strength of the track.
N.O. slid into irrelevance? I'm also a Daft Punk fan (for ex.) and they and artists like them owe more to Technique (1989) than to anything that came before. Give Brotherhood another listen.
How about 'stolen' or 'unoriginal'? All Simon did was pay a bunch of South African session guys to jam in the studio for a few weeks and then he tooks the best bits and wrote songs over them. Even Oasis try harder than that. (They're still rubbish, mind)
I'd been a big fan of PS up to that point; I still have my original S&Garfunkel albums, plus "There goes Rhymin' Simon", his greatest achievement, in my view. My opinion of him dipped after Graceland and has never fully recovered. But then, what do I know?
@Kieron Thanks for your response. I was on a word limit here and I regret having the opportunity to mention that I do admire some of Paul Simon's early music. The point is to look at the ubiquitous critical acceptance of this album and try to better understand it. Not to attack anyone's favorite childhood album.
This is not a music review, this is a review of music FASHION. And it stinks of hipsterism (and racism, for that matter). Grow up, listen to the music--it is very well done on many levels--and a significant improvement on Simon's early work--in the counterpoint, arrangements, and especially in the lyrics. That you prefer his early music is another bad sign of hipsterism, and an indication that you are not listening--except to the babble at dinner parties. If you do have actual MUSICAL criticism to offer, fine--let's hear it. But to criticize an album for popularity is the "zenith" (bleh) of phony pretention.
@DF Tried to publish a response here but something didn't work. Apologies if this gets printed twice. I'm sorry if this stinks of hipsterism to you, but if you read the review carefully without allowing it to make you upset, you will see that I pointed out a few things I didn't like about the content of the album. The music is (imho) passive (lacking in emotional urgency), and the lyrics are particularly troublesome (to me). Once again: Working on a word limit, writing the "anti" piece to a two-sided conversation about a beloved album creates certain structural limitations, as I'm sure you can imagine. I assure you that I would not discount any album for being popular. While pretension is in the eye of the beholder, my words are not phony, but completely sincere. Best.
If my problem was a Death Star, this article is a photon trodepo.
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in total agreement here. When you mention alternatives, how about almost anything by Juluka or Savuka, 90% of which came before Graceland. Or even the long forgotten but brilliant "Circle and the Square" by Red Box from just about the same year
I agree with you 100%. I hated Graceland when it came out and 25 years later I still do. Like Billy Joel, Paul Simon is a boring hack with a very mediocre talent who thinks he's much better than he really is.
I played this album at high volume to some Bulgarians who had never heard it. Blew their mind, no politics, fashion just music.
Saying that slayer is for dead-end white communists shows how much the writer really knows about music. I was done after that...