Sounds of Silence

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.