It’s a given that Paul Simon is one of the great American pop song writers, and that Air Supply is a sugary treat that wears thin pretty quickly. Can any musicians here quantify why this is? If you took these compositions in to your music theory or songwriting professor/partner/producer, what exactly would they pick apart as the things that make AS an afterthought and S/G able to fill arenas 30 years later, and still be played on even the rock stations?
Paul Simon is a balladeer and a talented musician/arranger. Air Supply makes rhymes.
As to S/G, some things are just timeless, for example their lyrics and their harmonies.
Paul Simon was able to write a song that didn’t have the word ‘love’ in the title. (-:
Seriously, Paul Simon is a great songwriter who drew on influences from world music, folk, rock, classical, you name it. His melodies are complex and interesting. He throws the unexpected at you a lot. His rhythms are catchy, but never boring. There’s just no comparison between his stuff and Air Supply.
I should say that I’m not a huge fan of Air Supply, and they’re only familiar to me through their major hits. Maybe they had a large body of great music that didn’t make it on the radio and deserve more respect than I’m giving them.
Consider these Air Supply Lyrics:
Could you get any more trite than that?
Compare to this:
Those are lyrics on a whole different level. Musically, the comparison is about as stark.
Sure, but then you have:
Slow down, you movin’ too fast
You gotta make the morning last
Just kickin’ down the cobblestones
Lookin’ for fun and
Feelin’ groovy
Hello lamp post
Whatcha knowin?
I’ve come to watch your flowers growin’
Ain’tcha got no rhymes for me?
Doo Bee Doo Doo,
Feelin’ groovy
I was focusing on the music instead of the lyrics, because personally I think the music press focuses too much on the lyrics. I think that’s because they’re insiders who want to ring every bit of thought and analysis out of the piece that they can, and because they can quantify their preferences more easily. I’d like to (if possible) know more about the actual music, because I think that if you set AS lyrics to A/G songs, you’d still have something pretty good, that would sell well, although it might not have the same status, and I don’t know why someone writing such quality music would settle for such near-drivel.
Simon and Garfunkel are whole cloth, Air Supply is the lint in the dryer trap.
‘Loves Me Like a Rock’ 
As I recall from my long-abandoned attempt to learn guitar, Paul Simon used chords that nobody else in music even heard of. They were to three-chord rock like hex is to binary.
If we could post a few lines of sheet music from each, the way Sam Stone posted a few lines of lyrics, would the difference in complexity and inventiveness be as obvious?
Simon ventured into realms that others hadn’t tried to any extent. His song “Late In The Evening” was a masterpiece of percussion and brass, not to mention the lyrics. “Ladies on the stoops. . .the sound of a capella groups…” Man, who else thinks of things like that for a song? Then came “Graceland”, which blew everyone away.
People please. You’re all out of love!
I’m so ashamed to say my very first concert was Air Supply. I was seven and I thought I was SO cool.
S&G write timeless music. Air Supply makes me sad for my seven year self.
Explaining why the music is more complex and nuanced is tough if you haven’t had musical training. You can get into all kinds of things like harmonic structure and unresolved tension and expectation and all kinds of stuff.
Simon is a master of rhythm, for one thing. Take the ‘feeling groovy’ song above. The lyrics are nothing special in this case, but the whole point of the song is to be evocative of a time, place, and emotion. To do that, it’s got a very unique rhythm. Not in the sense of wildly complex rhythmic patterns, but just something you don’t normally hear from a pop song. And it’s got a real ‘groove’ to it that moves it along. Just sing it to yourself in your head if you know the song. But that’s just a minor example. Later in his career his rhythms and patterns become astonishingly complex.
Paul Simon is one of the great songwriters of our time. I think he’s a little too overlooked these days. His work with Simon and Garfunkel was timeless, and his solo work in the 1970’s and 1980’s produced some of the best music of those decades. Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard, Kodachrome, Mother and Child Reunion, Loves Me Like a Rock, Late in the Evening… Some of the best American pop songs ever written.
Much as I admire many of the innovative S&G musical arrangements, sometimes they are too lush and detract from the stark beauty of the words and basic melody. For example, I never cared too much for the album version of A Poem On The Underground Wall from their album Parlsey, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. Then I got the CD version that had the demo take which is basically just Paul Simon and an acoustic guitar and it is AMAZING. Maybe because the simpler arrangement echoes many a subway musician I’ve heard.
I’d love to hear a more naked version of “I Am A Rock”, and a harder version “Hazy Shade Of Winter” (like if Jimi Hendrix would have covered it… Or even Guns ‘n’ Roses back in their heyday).
Out of curiosity, what’s your opinion of The Bangles’ cover?
If you listen to an Air Supply song, it generally sticks to a fairly basic setup that works but doesn’t do much different with it. The melody and the singing fits in well with the background. In some sense, it stays ‘safe’ and comfortable.
For instance, 'All out of Love" starts with arpeggiated guitar chords, not all that different from some S&G songs. But that pattern really never changes - it just repeats. The chorus has the keyboard swells but when it reaches its climax it goes back to the same thing. Then you have a coda that just repeats the chorus until the end. About the only interesting thing here are piano and drum fills. As for the singing, it starts with a bit of a pleading tone and pushes the desperation somewhat heading into the chorus, but doesn’t change all that much over the song.
“Bridge Over Troubled Water” is quite similar in the general arc of the song. Here you start with a piano intro that sounds a bit like a hymn. Certainly safe and comfortable. The piano backs off and the singing begins almost whisper-like. The crescendo is not just from the verse to the chorus, but over several verses. Instead of just stopping and letting the sound die out, the piano again pulls the intensity down, which promises a later climax. The ‘coda’ in this song adds new elements - the last verse plays with the melody a bit, percussion shows up stronger, and strings come in, with crashing cymbals by the end that raise the feeling to an incredible height.
Note that the two songs end almost exactly the same way - but the Simon & Garfunkel one takes a much more interesting path to get there. And this may be one of their schmaltziest, most similar to Air Supply songs they have. Musically speaking, they’re beating Air Supply at even what Air Supply does best. The rest of the S&G catalog has just as much variation and depth, if not more.
About the only times they aren’t as varied musically is in the traditional folk songs. But then they go and enrich the content in very adventurous ways. “Scarborough Fair” gets an anti-war descant. “Silent Night” gets a recounting of current events as a newscast.
In fairness, Simon & Garfunkel (ignoring Paul Simon’s solo work) is more famous for the lyrics than the music, but both elements work together well. Not that Air Supply doesn’t do that, it’s just not on the same level.
robardin, that’s a good point. I’ve long held that good songwriting can transcend genres, and many of Dylan’s songs have been done with great success in other styles. One of my favorite Mike Ness country-core (to invent a phrase) songs turned out to be “Don’t Think Twice”, by Dylan. The Ramones covered surf music and it worked, etc.
Thanks to those who tried to explain the OP even though you couldn’t get too far into the musical theory of it all, especially you who tried to get specific.
I know nothing about the intricacies of music, but Simon and Garfunkle (and Paul Simon’s work) makes my heart soar like an eagle to this very day. “Feelin’ Groovy” takes me right back to the 60’s, when all the world was a cool place and the future was ahead of me…Air Supply? Quick, turn the station. I said QUICK!
“I Am A Rock”, Hated. Off the Simple Machines compilation.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/The_Hated
… I will be damned, they’re early Emo? Huh.