(The Hit Hammer is where I"m reviewing each #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100. Starting from when the chart started in 1958 and eventually working my way to the present. To see my inspiration and more information about this blog, please refer down below)
Simon & Garfunkel - "The Sound of Silence"
Hit Number 1: January 1, 1966
Stay at Number 1: 2 Weeks
There's been a popular meme going around the last couple years involving "The Sound of Silence". It usually involves the first two lines of the song "Hello darkness my old friend/I've come to talk with you again", and is used when someone is alone and sad, and staring off into space. Or, at least a situation similar to that. I like memes, and they really can be hilarious sometimes, but I'd like to think that people today don't only know this song because of the meme. I'd like people to at least realize what the song stands for, and how it was the breakthrough hit for Simon & Garfunkel, a folk singing duo who relied on close harmonies and complex lyrics in their songs.
Paul Simon wrote the song in the span of several months, and after a studio audition, the duo had scored a contract with Columbia Records. They recorded "The Sound of Silence" for the first time in March of 1964, and released it later that year in October, along with the rest of their debut album. The album failed miserably however, and the duo went their separate ways, with Simon heading to England and Garfunkel resuming his studies at Columbia University. But I wouldn't be sitting here writing about the song if that had been it. In 1965, the song began receiving airplay in Boston, Massachusetts, as well as around different parts of Florida. Tom Wilson, the producer of the track, thought that it might be a good idea, with the growing airplay, to make a remix of the track. He overdubbed electric instruments and drums, and released his new remix in September 1965. Simon & Garfunkel were completely oblivious to this, and weren't notified until after it had already been released. The single eventually hit #1, leading the group to reunite and record a new album called "Sounds of Silence".
It's really hard to interpret the lyrics of the song, and I honestly haven't the slightest clue what it could be about. Simon did share a story which explains the first two lines of the song, since he used to write his old songs and play his guitar in his bathroom. He'd go into the bathroom, turn off the lights, turn on the faucet, and play with the bathroom echo. That's where he said the lines "Hello darkness my old friend/I've come to talk with you again" came from. But when he was asked how a 21 year-old comes up with the rest of the lyrics of the song, he simply stated "I have no idea." Garfunkel gave us his two cents of the song, saying the meaning of it was "the inability of people to communicate with each other, not particularly internationally but especially emotionally, so what you see around you are people unable to love each other." However you may interpret the song, it's certainly one that makes you think.
It's also pretty hard to place an emotion on "The Sound of Silence". It's not happy. It's not sad. It's not fun. It's not boring. It's "mysterious". I mean, lyrics like "People talking without speaking/People hearing without listening" and "And the people bowed and prayed/To the neon god they made", it's hard to make those lyrics sound "cool". But they somehow manage to do that. There really is a lot else to like about the song: The harmonies, the steady build-up of the song, the mysterious vibes it gives off..... but none of those things are what's best about the song. That would be those freaking lyrics.
It's incredible to me that Simon was only 21 years old when he wrote the song, cause those lyrics are something only a pure genius can think of. Or maybe a lot of drugs, but Simon doesn't strike me as the stoner type. Instead, he's one of those musically gifted geniuses who thought of all kinds of neat little song lyrics throughout his whole career, and "The Sound of Silence" is one of them. It's very easy to think of a song that can make you get up and dance, or makes you want to lock yourself up in your room and cry for hours on end. "The Sound of Silence" doesn't do that, and that's what makes it unique. It's the kind of song that Simon could only come up with if he was isolated, and no other noises around him. Or you know, the "sound of silence". And on a final note, maybe I was wrong about how it doesn't make listeners feel anything. It gives us a sense of peacefulness, and puts us in our own state of euphoria. Like all that exists is us and "the sound of silence". It's not easy to create a song like that, but Simon nailed it.
GRADE: 10/10
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