About the artist: Paul Simon (1941) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist, whose musical career has spanned over six decades. After initial successes in the sixties as the duo Simon and Garfunkel, his solo career took off in the early seventies. He is generally regarded as one of pop/rock's most important artists. Paul Simon currently has four songs in my list of about 200 best pop/rock songs of all time.
About the song: the most beautiful track from the 1973 album There goes rhymin' Simon is based on the melody of an old Lutheran hymn - the same used by Bach for the most poignant scenes of the St. Matthews Passion. The lyrics are among the most depressing he has penned, inspired by Simon's shock and disappointment with Richard Nixon's landslide presidential re-election in 1972, but the listener gets none of that directly in the text of the song. Instead, it poetically unveils the misgivings of an everyday urban labourer, fearful that the 'American dream' has eluded him forever. "Don't know a dream that's not been shattered or driven to its knees - I wonder what went wrong, I can't help it, I wonder what went wrong." Run time 3:44.
