The Definitive 1000 Songs Of All Time 1955 to 2005: Number 964

Friday, August 04, 2006

Number 964 - Simon & Garfunkel

Number 964

Simon & Garfunkel

"Bridge Over Troubled Waters"

(1970)
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Genre:Pop

1970 in Whangaparoa at a bach in Tindalls Bay listening to an old 8 track (Look it up in Google Gen Y) that was so crystal clear you could hear them breathing between notes, ah bliss. This was one of my first experiences of music that moved me, the way the song was sung, the lyrics and what it stood for was a lot for an 8 year old boy.

Good grief i even had the Nana Mouskouri version of this song on the big old tape player.

Imagine this,.... a stormy night, the waves crashing into the beach, lightning everywhere, a huge window looking out into the ocean with boats bobbing up

and down clinging for air and not to be dragged under... with this song blaring LOUD, and your 8 yrs old to boot and your Caregiver who was deaf as a post.

Just brilliant, and that memory still stays today like it was just a handful of years ago.

Oh and yes Gen Y (Generation Y) the version by Clay Aiken was absolutely stunning. But nowhere as good as Simon & Garfunkel or even Nana Mouskouri for that matter.

For Paul Simon see Number 742
For Art Garfunkel see Number 682

What does Rolling Stone think about S&G?

It wasn't clear at the time, but Bridge Over Troubled Water was an album about the end -- a casually ambitious look back at an expiring musical partnership (Simon and Garfunkel) and decade (the Sixties). Recorded in late 1969, it's largely remembered for a pair of big-themed production masterworks: "The Boxer" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water," led by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, respectively. "Bridge" quickly attained the beloved stature of a hymn, while "The Boxer" -- a metaphor for the immigrant experience in America -- ranks with Simon's finest songs. At the other extreme are sprightly tunes that hearken back to the duo's Fifties roots: "Cecelia," whose echoed hand claps sound like an early hip-hop drum loop, and "Keep the Customer Satisfied," the antic tale of a flimflam man staying ahead of the law. During the Bridge sessions, Garfunkel was often working on the film Catch-22 in Mexico; Simon gently notes his absence in "The Only Living Boy in New York." The notion of life chapters closing also permeates the folksy bossa nova "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright." It's ironic that "Bridge Over Troubled Water," a gospel-style song of reassurance and solidarity that Simon wrote as a vehicle for Garfunkel's golden tenor, would be one of their final collaborations. But they exited on an exhilarating note. ~ [Source: Rolling Stone]

Rolling Stone Top 500 Songs ranked this song at Number 47 and the Album ranked at Number 51

This song has a crowbarred rating of 52.2 out of 108

Bridge Over Troubled Water
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