Paul Simon
In The Blue Light

In 2018, after a highly prolific decade both in terms of albums and concerts, Paul Simon quietly stepped away from the scene with In the Blue Light, an album containing 10 rearrangements of lesser-known tracks by the American singer-songwriter. Despite initial assumptions, this isn’t a self-congratulatory album or a collection for completionists, but it is a perfectly successful album in every aspect, deserving its place in the discography of an artist who, when recording something, hardly does it just for the sake of it.

Besides, it was highly unlikely that someone like Simon could mess up an album of reinterpretations, an artist who throughout his career has always placed great importance on arrangements and the entire musical sphere: and indeed, in this album, we see him having fun with his music, stripping down and dressing up tracks from the distant past (like the poignant and exquisite René and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War, or the bluesy One Man's Ceiling Is Another Man's Floor) but also from the recent past (such as Questions for the Angels, one of his most beautiful tracks of the 2000s). When it comes to musicians, Simon has always treated himself well, and even here he doesn’t hold back, drawing from the most prominent names in the contemporary jazz scene, ranging from Joe Lovano to Wynton Marsalis, from Jack DeJohnette to longtime collaborator Steve Gadd, from John Patitucci to Bill Frisell, in short, the more, the merrier.

In the Blue Light feels like a great party among friends who still have much to say to each other, but it’s that moment of the party where some guests have already left, those remaining have stopped dancing and now everyone is on the couch chatting about this and that, laughing, finishing the last bottle of wine but with one eye already on the driveway and the things to do the next morning. With the only difference being that for the others it will be a workday, a return to normal life, whereas for Simon it will be the start of a well-deserved retirement, with the awareness of having traversed entire eras of music history always at the forefront, with the desire to experiment and learn from others. And for this, I and many, many others will always be grateful to him.