At 82 years old, Paul Simon could be forgiven for wanting to hang up his microphone and give his vocal chords a well-deserved rest, but instead the celebrated singer-songwriter has just released a new work, based - somewhat surprisingly - on King David’s Psalms.
Simon, whose career spans six decades, started working on his new composition Seven Psalms after waking up from a particularly vivid dream one night in 2019.
Four years later the result is a continuous piece of music in seven sections, designed to be played as a whole musical experience which Simon describes as "an argument with myself about belief, or not".
Although there's often been a spiritual dimension to Simon's music including classics such as Bridge Over Troubled Water, Sounds of Silence, and Graceland, this is the first overtly religious work from the artist who has twice been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Paul Simon grew up in Queens, a suburb of New York City, where his family belonged to a synagogue although they were not religious. Simon reportedly said that he had no personal interest in the Jewish faith.
A clue to his inspiration for this latest work could lie in the opening words, “I’ve been thinking about the great migration…” Now into his ninth decade the Grammy-winning artist appears to be looking ahead to what comes next.
