Paul Simon At Eighty

If Bob Dylan is rock's surrealist singer-songwriter, Paul Simon is its middle-class intellectual bard.

Paul Simon, who turns eighty today, is a studious thinker who observes the world around him and delves into the meanings of everything from the most mundane to the most profound.  He's famous for analyzing and probing the subject matter of his songs and coming up with novel interpretations from his own unique perspective.  His songs have long connected the outside world to his personal thoughts and feelings, from his take on our inability to connect with one another in "The Sound of Silence" and the rootless of the touring musician in "Homeward Bound," two of his songs from his partnership with Art Garfunkel, to his ruminations on death from "Mother and Child Reunion" (the title of which was inspired by the name of a chicken and egg meal) to creeping middle age in "Still Crazy After All These Years."

Simon's intellectual curiosity led to his exploration of various cultures in his music from gospel and Latin music to the sounds of South African street music and the rhythms of Brazil.  Always searching, never staying still, perpetually self-aware as well as looking at the rest of us, Simon has created fresh music well into his later years, and he's remained just as relevant as he was in the then-burgeoning urban folk scene of the early sixties.  If he had remained in that old-school coffeehouse culture, Simon would have still made compelling music, but it wouldn't nearly be as interesting.  Paul Simon's greatest talent is his ability to always express himself in new and fresh ways.