"You Can Call Me Al" by Paul Simon

Strong Songs

Kirk Hamilton

Music Commentary, Music, Musicreviews

4.9 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 November 2018

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, Kirk breaks down one of his favorite songs from one of his favorite albums. STRONG SONGS ON PATREON Strong Songs has a Patreon! If you liked this episode (or, you know, any of them), we hope you'll consider supporting the show. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/strongsongs IF YOU'LL BE MY BODYGUARD Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al" was a single from his incredible 1986 album Graceland, and its music video introduced a generation to the wonders of goofy lip-synching and fretless bass solos. It's a harmonically simple tune with a cleverly dense arrangement, and brilliantly uses musical layering. Band/Artist: Paul Simon Album: Graceland, 1986 Composed by: Paul Simon Listen/Buy: Apple Music | Amazon | Spotify NEWSLETTER/MAILING LIST Sign up for Kirk's mailing list to start getting monthly-ish newsletters with music recommendations, links, news, and extra thoughts on new Strong Songs episodes: https://kirkhamilton.substack.com/subscribe STRONG MERCH! Visit the Strong Songs merch store for some very cool t-shirts, mugs, totes, and more: store.strongsongspodcast.com

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Strong Songs a podcast about music.
0:09.3	I am your host Kirk Hamilton and this is basically my first episode though I already did one episode
0:14.8	that wasn't technically an episode we don't need to get into that.
0:16.5	If you didn't listen to that one that was about Toto's Africa and you can find it in the feed.
0:20.9	If you are tuning in you are a new listener because everyone listening to
0:23.7	this podcast is a new listener and I thank you very much for listening.
0:27.3	I'm really excited to be doing this. I think we're going to be doing two every two
0:31.7	weeks for a little while just to sort of see how it goes and and yeah I think it
0:36.2	should be a good time I'm going to mostly talk about songs and songwriting and how songs work
0:41.4	but we will also probably talk about other kinds of music
0:44.7	including movie music video game music any kind of music it's all music and it's all
0:49.6	very good for today I would like to talk about one of my very favorite songs on one of my very
0:55.0	favorite albums. I'm going to play a little bit of it for you as if you didn't read the title
0:59.6	of this episode and don't already know what song I'm going to be talking about.
1:03.0	So close your eyes and pretend you didn't do that.
1:05.0	And just listen to these notes and to see if you recognize this.
1:24.0	Hmm, probably getting a little bit warmer, right?
1:34.0	All right, let's add one more note and talking about you can call me Al by the one and only Mr. Paul Simon.
1:57.0	A man walks down the street he says, why am I soft in the middle now?
2:02.0	Why am I soft in the middle of... All right, so this song, this is a really good song.
2:05.0	One of my favorite songs on one of my favorite albums, as I said,
2:10.0	is featured as a single off of Paul Simon's 1986 album, Graceland, which I actually didn't
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Kirk Hamilton, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Kirk Hamilton and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.