Simon & Garfunkel’s Career as a Duo Was Saved by This One Song in 1965

In 1965, Simon & Garfunkel scored their first No.1 single, with “The Sound Of Silence”. Written by Paul Simon, “The Sound Of Silence” appears on not one, but two of their records. The duo, made up of Simon and Art Garfunkel, first included a version of “The Sound Of Silence” on their freshman album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., out in 1964.

Videos by American Songwriter

Two years later,  a different version of “The Sound Of Silence” also appeared on their sophomore Sounds Of Silence record. It’s the second version that ultimately saved their career.

Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. was not at all a commercial success. Based on the failure of the project, Simon and Garfunkel parted ways, believing their time as a duo was over before it fully began. Unbeknownst to them, their record label, Columbia, reworked the song, adding electric instruments to the formerly sparse track.

When the new version was released ahead of the record, Simon was living in England, and Garfunkel had returned to college. “The Sound Of Silence” became a No. 1 hit, and Simon & Garfunkel reunited. After “The Sound Of Silence”, Simon & Garfunkel had several more hits, including “Homeward Bound”, “Mrs. Robinson”, and “Bridge Over Troubled Water”.

How Paul Simon Wrote “The Sound Of Silence”

“The Sound Of Silence” says, “Hello, darkness, my old friend / I’ve come to talk with you again / Because a vision softly creeping / Left its seeds while I was sleeping / And the vision that was planted in my brain / Still remains / Within the sound of silence.”

By his own admission, “The Sound Of Silence” is not a lyrical masterpiece. Still, Simon is rightfully proud of the song.

“Really, the key to ‘The Sound of Silence’ is the simplicity of the melody and the words, which are youthful alienation. It’s a young lyric, but not bad for a 21-year-old. It’s not a sophisticated thought, but a thought that I gathered from some college reading material or something. It wasn’t something that I was experiencing at some deep, profound level—nobody’s listening to me, nobody’s listening to anyone. It was a post-adolescent angst, but it had some level of truth to it, and it resonated with millions of people. Largely because it had a simple and singable melody.”

When Simon wrote “The Sound Of Silence”, he was pitching songs for a publishing company to record labels. Simon intended to let them publish “The Sound Of Silence”. But when he got into an argument with them, he decided to keep his publishing instead.

“From that point on, I owned my own songs, so that was a lucky argument,” he says.

Photo by CBS via Getty Images