In 1975, Paul Simon released “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover”. It’s a song that became one of his biggest hits as a solo artist. Written solely by Simon, “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” appears on Still Crazy After All These Years, his fourth studio album.
“50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” says, “The problem is all inside your head / She said to me / The answer is easy if you / Take it logically / I’d like to help you in your struggle / To be free / There must be fifty ways / To leave your lover.” It became Simon’s first No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, a success story that Simon admits is surprising, since the message is, by his own admission, a bit odd.
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“I woke up one morning in my apartment on Central Park, ” Simon recalls. “And the opening words just popped into my mind, ‘The problem is all inside your head, she said to me…’ That was the first thing I thought of,” Simon recalls. “So I just started building on that line. It was the last song I wrote for the album, and I wrote it with a Rhythm Ace, one of those electronic drum machines. So maybe that’s how it got that sing-song ‘Make a new plan Stan / Don’t need to be coy Roy‘ quality. It’s basically a nonsense song.”
How Paul Simon Wrote “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover”
Simon was teaching his three-year-old son, Harper, how to rhyme when he wrote “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover”.
“The chorus, the words of that, I was teaching my son Harper, who was just young at the time, I was teaching him about rhymes. So that was what that was about,” Simon later explained.
Ironically, “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” hit No. 1 on Valentine’s Day in 1976. The song was written when Simon was going through a divorce with his first wife, Peggy Harper. Still, he has never confirmed that the song was based on his own life.
“50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” is also Simon’s only No. 1 solo single on the Billboard Hot 100. Although he had other hit singles, he never reached the top spot on that chart again. Simon’s last Top 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 came in 1986, with “You Can Call Me Al“. “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” also appears on Simon’s 1977 Greatest Hits, Etc. project.
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