We continue our trip around the globe, and this time we stop in South Africa where we listen to the sweet Soweto music of Paul Simon, singing the best melody he's written since he dropped the wonderful songs of Graceland on the world twenty-three years ago. He's not singing about the Mississippi Delta anymore, though; no, Simon has moved back up to New York, to the ivy-bedraped walls of Columbia, and he's prepped out, what with his girl and her Louis Vittoin bag, sitting on a blanket in her front yard, one leg crossed over the other at the ankle, with the Gwen Stacy white headband and her Benetton sweater, dreaming of romance with the singer. Simon takes his imagery straight from Fitzgerald, but he stops short of Fitzgerald's tragedies. The girl in question is Simon's own version of Daisy Buchanan, but here she's Daisy Fay, before the marriage to Tom, the American dream still alive, not yet corrupt.
She's not listening to jazz on the blanket, though; she's listening to reggaeton--specifically Peter Gabriel. Why him? 'Cause this time around, Paul Simon has let four Columbia grads front for him, and he drops Gabriel's name so as not to arouse suspicion, for there's no way a band's debut single--the B side of it ("Mansard Roof" was the A side) at that--could sound so convincingly like Paul Simon at his best (including not only this wonderful melody but also the cooing--among the most pleasurable, enjoyable cooing ever put to record--at the end of each chorus) and not be Paul Simon. Is there?
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