1986Released
4:51

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Graceland. By Songfacts®.

Graceland is the mansion in Memphis, Tennessee where Elvis Presley lived; it is where Elvis is buried, and it is now a museum and popular tourist attraction. Paul Simon started calling his song "Graceland" after he came up with the track, which reminded him of the Sun Records sound where Elvis recorded. Simon says this song is an example of "how a collaboration works even when you're not aware of it occurring." He traveled to South Africa in February 1985 and recorded with a variety of local musicians. One of these sessions was with an accordion player named Forere Motloheloa, who played on the song "The Boy in the Bubble." These sessions produced a drum sound that Simon liked, which he described in the 2012 Graceland reissue: "The drums were kind of a traveling rhythm in country music - I'm a big Sun Records fan, and early-'50s, mid-'50s Sun Records you hear that beat a lot, like a fast, Johnny Cash type of rhythm." Simon put together a rhythm section comprised of three African musicians: guitarist Ray Phiri, fretless bass player Baghiti Khumalo, and drummer Isaac Mtshali. Simon played the drums for Phiri, and asked him to play something over it. Phiri started to play his version of American Country on electric guitar, which were chords not frequently used in African music: minor chords. When Simon asked him why he played that, Phiri responded, "I was just imitating the way you write." Simon asked him to overdub it with a lick, and along with Khumalo and Mtshali, they came up with the basic track. Said Simon, "The track has a beautiful emptiness to it. That's what made me think of Sun Records when it was nothing but slapback echo and the song." With Phiri playing his approximation of Amercian country, and Baghiti playing a straight ahead African groove on bass, Simon felt there was a commonality in the music, and he wrote a lyric to express that.

At first, Simon considered the word "Graceland" a placeholder title until he could come up with something better - maybe something that had to do with Africa. After a while, he realized the title wasn't going away, and he got comfortable with it. Said Simon: "I couldn't replace it. I thought, Maybe I'm supposed to go to Graceland. Maybe I'm supposed to go on a trip and see what I'm writing about, and I did." Simon describes that trip in the song; he drove to Graceland from Louisiana on Route 61, and the lyrics were his thoughts of the countryside: "The Mississippi Delta is shining like a national guitar." When he finally got to Graceland, he took the famous tour.

This is the title track of Simon's most successful album, selling over 15 million copies and winning a Grammy for Album of the Year. It is an album focusing mostly on African music, but it also explores other forms of non-mainstream music, like Zydeco. Simon considers this song to be less African-sounding than most of the other African-based tracks. The single also won Simon his third Record of the Year award - he previously won for "Mrs. Robinson" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water." Paul Simon's visit to South Africa was no easy task, as many nations were boycotting the country because of their racist apartheid policy. However, the United Nations Anti-Apartheid Committee supported his efforts since he only recorded with black South African musicians and did not collaborate with the government in any way. This didn't appease some critics, who felt that violating sanctions undermined efforts to effect change in the country, no matter his artistic intentions. Ultimately, the Graceland project helped raise awareness to the apartheid struggle and expose many South African musicians to a global audience. The sanctions were put in place mainly to prevent entertainers from performing lucrative gigs at the Sun City resort, and Simon did nothing to support the corrupt government there.

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Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Graceland.
AKey
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
118BPM

Album

The album Graceland is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Graceland.
Legacy Recordings
(P) 2012 Paul Simon under exclusive license of Sony Music Entertainment

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