Videos by American Songwriter
A collection of muted, introspective songs about fracturing relationships didn’t have a fighting chance in the midst of the MTV boom of the early ’80s. Hearts And Bones, released in 1983, was just such an album, and it was also the rare Paul Simon album that failed to make much of a dent on the public consciousness.
Hearts And Bones deserved a better fate though; take a listen now and you’ll find some of Simon’s most personal, potent lyrics tied to affecting tunes. And you’ll also find one of his all-time great unheralded gems, “Rene And Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War”, an offbeat love story melding surreal art and doo wop.
That title might seem like a mouthful, but it’s what inspired Simon to write the song in the first place after he came upon a photograph of the Magrittes, Rene the Belgian artist with a penchant for surrealism and his wife Georgette. In a 1984 Playboy interview, Simon explained how the song got started. “That was a caption of a photograph I was reading, and I thought, ‘That’s an interesting title for a song,’” he said. “After I got the phrase, I began to sing a melody that fit it. I didn’t have an instrument. I just sang it. My voice is my improvisational instrument, the melody instrument.”
The melody he crafted is a tender lullaby, with the keyboards and synths played so delicately that they wouldn’t break an egg. Simon imagines his titular protagonists living the life of happy tourists in America, enjoying swanky hotel suites, shopping in pricey stores, and dining with societal titans. But when they’re alone, they indulge in a far more intimate ritual: They dance naked in the moonlight to some of doo-wop’s leading lights (“The Penguins, the Moonglows, the Orioles, the Five Satins.”
Simon creates memorably vivid moments throughout the song, such as that surprising dance and the way the mannequins in the men’s store “brought tears to their immigrant eyes.” The bridge features the duo slumbering as the years hurtle past (“Time is cheap.”) Through it all “The deep forbidden music/ They’d been longing for” accompanies them on their travels, along with the dog of course.
In the final verse, this carefree couple does a little snooping while eating dinner at the home of the “power elite” and are stunned to find these stuffy snoots have “hidden away/ In the cabinet cold of their hearts” that same enchanting doo-wop music. Simon employed vocal group The Harptones to provide the backing vocals in the chorus, showing exactly what captivated the Magrittes in the first place.
Simon didn’t have any evidence that the Magrittes loved doo-wop. Or that they loved dancing naked, for that matter. But the title provided the perfect jumping-off point to let his imagination out for a stroll, and what he ended up creating certainly casts a spell. An underrated track on an underrated album, “Rene And Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War” is a song even lovelier than the title is long.
