Think Too Much: Paul Simon’s Hearts and Bones at 40
Why this Graceland run-up deserves a better rep
Don’t believe the anti-hype: The most widely disregarded solo album of Paul Simon’s commercial heyday is fully as worthwhile as its more famous family members.
It doesn’t sport the attention-getting South African framework of its legendary follow-up, but it’s a significant step in the unbroken progression running through Simon’s entire discography. From album to album his songwriting never stopped growing, and 1983’s Hearts and Bones is no exception.
On 1980’s One-Trick Pony, Simon began gradually shifting from a relatively linear, narrative-oriented m.o. toward a lyrical style making the most of poetic symbolism (not that he’d never employed such imagery before). He doubles down on that tactic here, though he’d soon follow it exponentially further on Graceland. The practice is plenty potent whether he’s finding fresh ways to mourn a dashed romance (his recent breakup with Carrie Fisher) on the title track or painting a properly surrealist scenario on “Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War.”
Those tunes turn out to be among Simon’s most harmonically sophisticated up to that point too, which is no mean feat considering some of his earlier accomplishments. Hearts and Bones sports its share of stylistic diversity as well. What other record can you think of where guest shots by fusion guitar firebrand Al Di Meola, ‘50s doo wop group The Harptones (On “Rene and Georgette”), and Chic’s Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards would all make sense?
This is also the first Simon solo album to use electronics in a significant way. He doesn’t slather those tools tastelessly across the tracks like some of his contemporaries did when struggling to stay “relevant” in the ‘80s, but the high-tech touches nevertheless arrive in some crucial spots. Vocoder-processed vocals are among the very first sounds on opening track “Allergies” (which later opens out into a speed-demon Di Meola solo). Mechanical-sounding percussive samples punctuate “Think Too Much (A).” And on the hyper-syncopated, New Wave-tinged “Cars are Cars,” Rodgers bangs out the first programmed beats ever to adorn a Simon release.
For all that’s been made of Hearts and Bones functioning as Simon’s Blood on the Tracks equivalent, with Fisher as the lost love in the taillights, “Train in the Distance” and the title track are the album’s only overt “relationship” songs. They’re among the album’s most emotionally impactful tracks, though. And a phrase from the former would give Simon’s 1988 best-of, Negotiations and Love Songs, its title.
There are a fair number of fun moments where Simon’s sense of humor comes into focus, like “When Numbers Get Serious,” which nearly ventures into Schoolhouse Rock territory with its multiplication-problem lyrics; the downright goofy “Cars Are Cars;” and “Think Too Much (A),” a single that somehow never came anywhere near the charts. (At least the album’s other single, “Allergies,” landed within spitting distance of the Top 40).
But Hearts and Bones ends on an ominous note with “The Late Great Johnny Ace.” A dark, mysterious melody stirs a moody vibe while eulogizing first the title character—a ‘50s R&B hero who accidentally shot himself dead at age 25—and then John Lennon, whose December 1980 assassination was still fresh in Simon’s mind at the time of writing. The song already had a disturbing history from its live premiere at Simon & Garfunkel’s famous 1981 Central Park performance, when an apparently unhinged audience member stormed the stage during Simon’s performance of the tune.
Between Hearts and Bones and the relatively unheralded One-Trick Pony, the early ‘80s represent a dip in Simon’s commercial trajectory. But even the briefest of peeks reveals that both albums honor their creator’s legacy just as much as the better-selling records that history has hung his legend on.
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