Graceland

📖 About this album

Paul Simon's seventh album, released in 1986. Recorded in South Africa with local musicians, it fuses American folk pop with African township music. Controversial for its political context but influential for its musical impact.

📝 Our review

Graceland is a valuable album and also an uncomfortable one. Paul Simon travelled to apartheid-era South Africa to record with local musicians and the musical result is extraordinary: mbaqanga, isicathamiya, township jive blended with his own folk pop. "You Can Call Me Al" and "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" remain irresistible. The cultural appropriation debate lingers, legitimately.

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