edit for headphones. I just can't understand why this song was #97 in the US and #25 in the UK and did not chart in any other country. To me this is a massive hit. A stunning, massive, giant big hit. What's wrong with this world? Am I the only one to think so? Oh no.*
Paul Simon: lead vocals, acoustic guitar, production
Art Garfunkel: harmony vocals, production
Hal Blaine: drums, percussion
Larry Knechtel: Hammond organ
Joe Osborn: bass
Uncredited: clarinet
Roy Halee: production, recording engineer
Bob Johnston: production assistant
Robert Honablue: engineer
AMERICA **
(Paul Simon)
let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together
I've got some real estate here in my bag
so we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies
and walked off to look for America
Kathy, I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh,
Michigan seems like a dream to me now
it took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've gone to look for America
laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces
she said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said, be careful, his bowtie is really a camera
toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat
we smoked the last one an hour ago
so I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine
and the moon rose over an open field
Kathy I'm lost, I said though I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why
counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
they've all come to look for America
all come to look for America
all come to look for America
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*
Stephen Holden, in reviewing Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits in 1972, wrote, "'America' (...) was Simon's next major step forward. It is three and a half minutes of sheer brilliance, whose unforced narrative, alternating precise detail with sweeping observation evokes the panorama of restless, paved America and simultaneously illuminates a drama of shared loneliness on a bus trip with cosmic implications."
Thom Jurek of "Allmusic" described the song's central question as an "ellipsis, a cipher, an unanswerable question", a song in which "sophisticated harmonic invention is toppled by its message".
David Nichols, in "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die", called the song "a splendid vignette of a road trip by young lovers; both intimate and epic in scale, it traces an inner journey from naive optimism to more mature understanding".
"American Songwriter" deemed the song "essentially a road-trip song, but like all road trips, it tends to reveal as much about the participants as it does about the lands being traversed".
Disc jockey and author Pete Fornatale describes "America" as one of Paul Simon's "greatest writing achievements in this phase of his career".
In 2014, a Rolling Stone readers poll ranked it fourth among the duo's best compositions, with the magazine writing, "it captured America's sense of restlessness and confusion during the year that saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, as well as the escalation of the war in Vietnam", declaring it one of their most "beloved" songs.
**
In 2010, lyrics from the song began appearing spray-painted on vacant buildings and abandoned factories in the town of Saginaw, Michigan, which is mentioned in the song. The group of artists, "Paint Saginaw", decided to paint the phrases after the population had dwindled vastly, noting that the song became rather "homesick" for the town’s residents. The song's entire lyrics are painted on 28 buildings in the city, including railroad tracks and bridge supports.
