Wiki
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Release Date
17 January 1966
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Length
11 tracks
Sounds of Silence is an album by Simon & Garfunkel, released on January 17, 1966. The album's title is a slight modification of the title of the duo's first major hit, "The Sounds of Silence", which was released previously on the album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., and also on the soundtrack to the movie The Graduate. It was taken from their debut and electric instruments and drums were overdubbed by Bob Dylan's studio band on June 15, 1965 and released in September 1965 as a single. "Homeward Bound" was released on the album in the UK. It was also released as part of the box set Simon & Garfunkel Collected Works, on both LP and CD. Many of the songs in the album had been written by Paul Simon while he lived in London during 1965. A lot of these songs had appeared on his album The Paul Simon Songbook, released in August of 1965 in England. These songs are "I Am a Rock", "Leaves That Are Green", "April Come She Will", "A Most Peculiar Man", and "Kathy's Song".
The song "Richard Cory" was based on a poem with the same title by Edwin Arlington Robinson. The chorus, however, is entirely of Simon's composition.
Two songs on the album deal with suicide: "Richard Cory" and "A Most Peculiar Man".
The English singer-songwriter Billy Bragg lifted the opening lines of "Leaves That Are Green" ("I was 21 years when I wrote this song/I'm 22 now, but I won't be for long") for his song "A New England", which appeared on Bragg's 1983 EP Life's a Riot with Spy Vs Spy and was subsequently a UK hit for Kirsty MacColl.
These same lyrics can be found in the Kirsty MacColl version of this song, as released as a cover in 1984, the song was her biggest solo hit - reaching #7 in the UK charts and #8 in Ireland.
"Somewhere They Can't Find Me" is essentially a reworking of the title track of the duo's first album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. It was recorded along with "We've Got a Groovy Thing Goin'" a few months before producer Tom Wilson dubbed electric instruments on "Sounds of Silence". The recurring descending bass line in the track, as well as its introductory guitar riff were borrowed from Davey Graham's acoustic guitar piece "Anji," a cover of which follows on the album.
* There are three cover variations of the LP:
o Original issue: SIMON & GARFUNKEL on one line; SOUNDS OF SILENCE on another, all in capital letters, no song titles on the front.
o Second issue: Enlarged title letters, with only the first letter of the words "Sounds" and "Silence" in the album title capitalized. The first letters in "Simon" and "Garfunkel" are capitalized, but the rest are in lower-case. Song titles also included on the front.
o Third issue: Same front cover as the second, the back cover has the copy of Tiger Beat magazine in Garfunkel's hand airbrushed out.
The original LP label mistakenly spells "Anji" as "Angie" and credits it to Bert Jansch, who had recorded the tune for his 1965 debut album. The back cover of the original LP sleeve properly credits Davey Graham as composer but retains the "Angie" misspelling. Both errors were corrected for subsequent reissues.
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