The songwriter who kept changing the sound of his own songs

Paul Simon was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in Queens, the son of a bass player and dance bandleader and an elementary-school teacher. He met Art Garfunkel in elementary school in 1953, and by the 1960s the two had become a soundtrack for a generation with “The Sound of Silence”, “Mrs. Robinson”, “America” and “The Boxer”. Their last album, Bridge over Troubled Water, is among the best-selling of all time.

Alone, Simon refused to repeat himself. He explored gospel, reggae and soul, and the early solo years produced “Mother and Child Reunion”, “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”, “Kodachrome” and “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”. He hosted Saturday Night Live four times between 1975 and 1987, made his acting debut in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, and reunited with Garfunkel for the 1981 Concert in Central Park.

His most acclaimed album came in 1986. Graceland drew on South African influences, and its single “You Can Call Me Al” became one of his most successful. The Rhythm of the Saints followed in 1990, and a second Concert in the Park in 1991, without Garfunkel, drew approximately 500,000 people. Not everything landed: his 1998 Broadway musical The Capeman was poorly received.

He kept recording anyway, with You're the One, So Beautiful or So What, Stranger to Stranger and, in 2023, Seven Psalms. He has been inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and has won 16 Grammy Awards, three of them for Album of the Year, and he co-founded the Children's Health Fund. What runs through it all is a songwriter's patience: listening for the next rhythm, then fitting words to it.