Paul Simon is a talented musician and songwriter, so it’s not exactly shocking that he holds other musicians to similarly high standards. He also wasn’t one to bite his tongue, and Paul Simon famously expressed how much he hated the following three songs. Let’s take a look!
“Still Crazy After All These Years” by Karen Carpenter
It’s kind of odd that a Karen Carpenter tune is on this list, but Simon apparently didn’t love this song. It makes sense, though. Simon and Carpenter were once romantically entangled, and they maintained a friendship for quite some time afterwards. When Carpenter was recording “Still Crazy After All These Years”, a cover of Simon’s own material, he apparently got pretty insensitive about how much he hated her version while visiting the singer in the studio.
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“In a voice that combined derision, snobbishness, concern, and alarm… ‘Karen, what are you doing? This stuff is awful!’” producer Glenn Berger said.
“Give Ireland Back To The Irish” by Paul McCartney
This is an interesting one, but I get where Simon was coming from. Purpose, integrity, and quality are all important to the hitmaker. Naturally, he would be one to question whether or not popular music is the best possible genre to voice political beliefs. One can’t help but wonder if it’s the best medium for such a thing, as it could come off as disingenuous.
“‘Give Ireland Back To The Irish’, that’s garbage,” said Simon. “I don’t say that someone can’t write a social song, or even a song that’s a political song, and have it work, as a song and as a political statement. But mass manufacturing of tunes, sort of ‘let’s knock off ‘Power To The People’’… I find it in bad taste. It offends me.”
“59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)” by Simon & Garfunkel
Well, it’s not exactly shocking that a Simon & Garfunkel song made it to our list of songs that Paul Simon hated. A few tunes from the folk duo could have made it here, but I went with “59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)”. According to Simon, this pop-leaning addition to the group’s discography was just too shallow for his liking.
It’s a great song, and Simon managed to pen it while deep in depression; that’s certainly a feat. However, Simon didn’t like the song and famously refused to play it for years. It wasn’t until 2018 that he whipped the track out live, and he told the audience, “I’m going to penalize myself. I’m going to sing one of my songs that I loathe.”
Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage for Rubenstein Communications, Inc.
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