Paul Frederic Simon (born October 13, 1941) is an American musician, singer, songwriter and actor. Simon's musical career has spanned over six decades. He is widely regarded as one of the best songwriters in popular music history.
Bonding over a shared love of the Everly Brothers, and after whom they modeled their early sound, he formed the duo Simon & Garfunkel (sometimes credited as "Tom & Jerry" in their early years), in 1956 with childhood friend Art Garfunkel. They scored a minor hit under the "Tom & Jerry" moniker with the song "Hey, Schoolgirl" while still in their teens. While and after attending college, the two continued to perform together, with Simon also performing and recording some solo songs. After graduating college, they recorded their first album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., which consisted of a mixture of cover songs, traditional ballads, and a number of Simon-penned originals. The album flopped and Simon left the U.S. emigrating to England to record The Paul Simon Songbook, his first solo album. A heavily overdubbed remix of their song "The Sound of Silence" became a surprise radio hit over the winter of 1965-1966, leading Simon to return to the U.S. and reform the duo with Garfunkel; they would release four more studio albums together and become one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed groups of the late 1960s. Simon would compose nearly all of their original songs, including hit singles such as "Mrs. Robinson", "Scarborough Fair/Canticle", "America", and "Bridge over Troubled Water".
After Simon & Garfunkel split up in 1970, at the height of their popularity, Simon began a successful solo career. He recorded three acclaimed albums over the following five years, all of which charted in the top 5 on the Billboard 200 album chart. His 1972 self-titled album contained the hit songs "Mother and Child Reunion" and "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard", while the follow-up There Goes Rhymin' Simon featured the lead single "Kodachrome", which peaked on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart at number 2, his best charting solo work to that point. A live album, Live Rhymin', followed in 1974. The 1975 album Still Crazy After All These Years, which featured guest vocals from Art Garfunkel, was his first number 1 charting solo album, and featured the number 1 hit single "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover", among other top-40 songs such as "Still Crazy After All These Years", "Gone at Last", and "My Little Town". The non-album single "Slip Slidin' Away" peaked at number 5 in 1977, but his recorded output decreased significantly for the rest of the decade.
He returned in 1980 with a film he wrote and produced, One-Trick Pony, about a down-on-his-luck folk singer trying to return to his former glory. The film made little impact on the box office, but the accompanying album did produce another hit single for Simon, "Late in the Evening", which peaked on the charts at number 6, and for which Simon was nominated for a Grammy. He reunited with Art Garfunkel for The Concert in Central Park in 1981, which saw half of a million spectators, and which produced a hit single of its own, a live cover of the Everly Brothers classic "Wake Up Little Susie". A world tour with Garfunkel followed in 1982-1983 and while the two planned a full reunion studio album, their relationship soured and Simon ended up working the failed project into the 1983 album Hearts and Bones, a commercial and critical failure for Simon.
In 1986, coming off a brief slump of the previous two years, he released Graceland, an album inspired by South African township music, which sold 14 million copies worldwide and remains his most popular and critically acclaimed solo work. A number of hit singles were released from the album, including "You Can Call Me Al", "The Boy in the Bubble", and "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes". It won the Album of the Year Grammy in 1987. The followup, 1990's The Rhythm of the Saints, was well received and itself nominated for a Grammy, but failed to match the commercial success of his magnum opus.
He continued to tour throughout the 1990s, and wrote a Broadway musical titled The Capeman, and recorded a companion album titled Songs from The Capeman which was released in 1997. His 2000 album You're the One was nominated yet again for Album of the Year honors. He followed that album up with several years of touring, including another reunion tour with Garfunkel, and released Surprise, his last album of the decade, in 2006. In 2016 he released Stranger to Stranger, which debuted at number 3 on the Billboard Album Chart and number 1 the UK Albums Chart, and marked his greatest commercial and critical success in thirty years. His most recent album is 2018's In the Blue Light, which contains re-arrangements of lesser-known songs from his prior albums.
Simon has earned sixteen Grammy Awards for his solo and collaborative work, including three for Album of the Year (Bridge Over Troubled Water, Still Crazy After All These Years, and Graceland), and a Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a two-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: first in 1990 as a member of Simon & Garfunkel and again in 2001 for his solo career. In 2006 he was selected as one of the "100 People Who Shaped the World" by Time. In 2011, Rolling Stone named Simon one of the 100 greatest guitarists, and in 2015 he was ranked eighth in their list of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time. Simon was the first recipient of the Library of Congress's Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2007.
Last Updated: June 9, 2021
