46. Paul Simon, "Graceland"

 

And we're back, hopefully well-rested, etc., ready for the final push, the final 46 albums, which we begin with, somewhat puzzlingly, this album.  Of course, this record was a sensation upon its release in 1986 and sold something like 16 million copies and I will confess to having liked "Boy in the Bubble," the lead track, with its rasping accordion and loping beat and slightly disturbing and unsettling lyrics, but there is a lot of mess around this record.

First of all, there's the little matter of cultural appropriation, which may be too mild a term here; it's more like the outright theft of a musical style.  Simon defied the United Nations' then-extant cultural boycott of South Africa to go there and record with musicians he had heard on a borrowed casette.  There are varying accounts about the degree to which Simon relied on, or explicitly stole from, the African artists, but there is no question that he came back from South Africa wtih a brand new sound hitherto unknown to him and made a gajillion dollars off of it.  The African artists were of course very diplomatic about it and were gracious in thanking Simon for bringing their style of music to the world, but American artists Los Lobos, who collaborated with Simon on the track "All Around the World or the Myth of Fingerprints" had no reason to mince words and flat-out accused Simon fo stealing the song from them.  (This article does a nice job summing up all the controversy around the album.)

So putting all that aside (and there is a LOT of it to put aside), what about the music?  Again, if we set aside the issue of the fact that Simon lifted the sound wholesale from powerless musicians in one of the most oppressive societies in the world at the time, a lot of it is, as we say in 2022, cringe.  Remember "You Can Call Me Al"?  If you can watch this video and not be vicariously embarrassed for everyone involved, you have more resolve than I:

Imagine enlisting Chevy Chase to work on anything.  Both the video and the song are just dorky and so "aww, Dad," which I guess can be appealing in its total earnestness but feels gross when considered in light of the cultural theft that is the backdrop of this album.

The title track, "Graceland," is more or less about Simon's failed marriage to the late, great Carrie Fisher and a trip he's taking with his nine-year-old son through the American South (since he originally used the lyric "wasteland" instead of "Graceland," it's doubtful that the story is true).  "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" is driven by Bakithi Kumalo's ambling bass line and a great intro sung by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, one of the artists Simon worked closely with in South Africa.

So I don't know, this is a Dad album classic and it's here no doubt because it sold a ton of records and I will grudgingly admit that a lot of the vocal melodies, which Simon apparently did write himself, are good and Simon is of course a legend and a stellar songwriter in his own right.  But the grossness around the making of this album is hard to shake, and so it's a hard album for me to love.  Plus it's dorky as hell.

Is this album in my personal Top 100? No.