Do you know how hard it is to find grownup pop songs?
I just watched Jackson Browne talk about the song The Pretender, which I used to consider to be the Most Grownup Pop Song out there. After what he said, though, I’m not so sure. I don’t want my grownup-ed-ness to be mistaken for disillusionment.
But Paul Simon always seems to nail it. He writes undeniably grownup pop songs (and we hope to discover more of them, from other artists). Take, for instance, the refrain of The Obvious Child:
Well I’m accustomed to a smoother ride/Maybe I’m a dog that’s lost his bite/I don’t expect to be treated like a fool no more/I don’t expect to sleep the night/Some people say a lie is just a lie/But I say the cross is in the ballpark/Why deny the obvious child?
Simon isn’t rebelling against an authority, carving out an identity, or throwing anger at the loss of his youthful idealism. Instead Simon gives us—in a pretty straightforward way—his grownup habits and expectations, his disbelief in absolutes, and his belief in the spiritual practice of baseball. He owns the obvious—that he’s not a child anymore.
That is so Second Half.
—Steph
