Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits

This duo is responsible for some of the most momentous pop music in American history. Duh.

Back in the days before streaming and digitally owned music, there were only physical copies. CDs were huge just a decade or two ago; cassette tapes bridged the gap between CDs and records. And records had begun to seem hopelessly outdated; the term vinyl had yet to be used widely. Back in the CD/cassette tape era, you didn't always need to own everything you wanted. There were some albums that everyone else seemed to own, and you could just listen to their copy. In my case, my sister - five years my elder - left a fair bit of her music collection behind when she went to college. She was my unknowing benefactor when I went to her now-empty room and borrowed her copy of Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits.

Now, I didn't just suddenly discover Simon & Garfunkel for the first time in high school. True, aside from Bridge over Troubled Water, S&G had contributed just one new song over the 1970s. And much of Paul Simon's 1970s music didn't appeal to me; it sounded like easy listening music, barely a step or two removed from Lawrence Welk. I heard nothing after the soporific "Slip Slidin' Away" until the extravaganza that was Graceland, released over a decade later. But Simon and Garfunkel's songs were omnipresent, floating in our country's consciousness and airwaves, life-giving and affirming as oxygen. So instead of stumbling upon a treasure box of perfect folk-pop songs for the first time, I was just thrilled to have all the necessary goods in one tidy package...plus a few gorgeous ditties I hadn't heard before.

My music collection back in 1990 left a fair bit of testosterone to be desired, and this album certainly didn't contribute to the cause. What it did do, though, was to allow me to work on my anoretic voice on some of the most poignant and beautiful songs from the 1960s. I couldn't rumble down low quite yet, and for some reason, I idealized a high tenor, so I did what I could to nurture said tenor. (It certainly came in handy a year later when I began my choral career.) And I tried to ape Simon and Garfunkel's straight, unobtrusive, simply declarative singing. Any high notes sounded effortless, and that was my goal...regardless of how much my neck muscles and jugular veins would pop out, I would make those high Fs perfect, and not in falsetto, either!

I still point to Art Garfunkel's "For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her" as a crystalline example of how tender and touching singing can be. The imagery is beautiful, and virtually every phrase is an impressionistic reverie ("I heard cathedral bells/Tripping down the alleyways"; "What a dream I had, dressed in organdy, clothed in crinoline of smoky burgundy"; "We walked on frosted fields of juniper and lamplight"). Say what you will about Simon's precious poesy elsewhere; here, he gets it perfect. There is not a forced syllable to be found. The delicate and pointillistic accompaniment is gorgeous and perfectly suits the mood. And though Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme holds the original version, this live rendition sparkles with more direct chord progressions and clearer recording.

I also jibed with "I Am A Rock," Simon's declaration of emotional independence from all around him. Friends and lovers be damned, he was going it alone...and as an alienated teenager who found little of emotional sustenance to be had around me, so would I. Again, his fascination with poetry came to the forefront, where he intentionally contradicted John Donne's famous poem "No Man Is An Island."

Such was my resonance with this album and its melancholy that by mid-high school, I could sing anything on it, with memorized lyrics and the correct key, at a moment's notice. But as I grew older, so did this album, and we began to part ways during the latter years of high school. By mid-college, I had little use of it. I returned to the album in November of 2013 based on the 50th anniversary of JFK's death. I had mistakenly thought that "Mrs. Robinson" was the #1 song at the time of his death (actually, it was some song about a flying nun or something), when actually it was around RFK's death. Either way, I had remembered reading about how the lyrics seemed to echo America's sentiment at the time. ("Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.") So I decided to revisit the album...and on the recommendation of many others, ended up getting its more expansive and sonically-updated relative, The Best of Simon and Garfunkel. It's nice to have more songs here, particularly from Bookends, an album I never had. But much like people sometimes complain about the sterility of CD sound vs. the warmth of vinyl, I feel like something has been lost in the upgrade somehow, and I miss the familiarity of the original audio. Oh well. At any rate, for me, the best Simon and Garfunkel songs remain essential coming of age listening. Millions of Americans dating back to the 1960s agree.

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Other valuable findings from my sister's collection back in the day: Van Morrison - Moondance | Cowboy Junkies - The Trinity Session | Paul Simon - Negotiations and Love Songs 1971-1986