In 1986, Graceland sold 14 million copies worldwide and garnered both the Album and Song of the Year Grammy in 1987. Simon and the members of Ladysmith Black Mambazo performed on Saturday Night Live and appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone. It generated three hit singles and it kept Paul Simon and the Graceland tour on the road for five years. Its music was heard across the globe. Today, its music and its reputation still reach generations of music enthusiasts yet so many are unaware of how pivotal that one album was during the 1980s, how it helped birth the idea of World Music and revived the career of one of America’s most important songwriters. How it influenced the political progress of South Africa a country divided by institutionalized racism, causing and then transcending years of controversy. How in fact the album came to be in the first place.
Graceland’s 25th anniversary CD features the original album with bonus tracks including a unreleased tracks audio documentary produced in 2012 with Paul Simon discussing the writing, inspiration and recording of the song ‘Graceland’.The melding of South African styles and Simon’s trademark sensibility made for one of the most intriguing albums–not to mention commercial hits–of the ’80s. At once lively, thoughtful, gorgeous, and tough, Graceland acknowledges splits both in South Africa’s social fabric and in Simon’s personal life (the title track is a clear descendant of the earlier “Hearts and Bones,” a song about the singer-songwriter’s brief marriage to Carrie Fisher). Humor is hardly absent from the mix, though; witness the addled “I Know What I Know” and the fable-like “You Can Call Me Al.” –Rickey Wright
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