Street Angel

Album: Stranger to Stranger (2016)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • This features the Italian electronic dance music artist Clap! Clap!, who had made an album called Tayi Bebba, blending African field recordings and EDM. Simon told Rolling Stone the record is "a masterpiece."

    The pair met up in 2015 when Paul Simon's world tour touched down in Milan, Italy. Simon played him a work in progress, and he ended up putting his sound on three of the tracks ('The Werewolf,' 'Wristband' and this one)." "My 23-year-old son Adrian is a composer and he told me about him," Simon told Rolling Stone. "He takes African sound samples and puts digital dance grooves behind it. His newest album is a masterpiece. He makes music sound new and old at the same time."
  • Clap! Clap!'s warbling beats are intertwined here with a slurred vocal loop which was sampled from gospel group The Golden Gate Quartet. Simon slowed them down and then played them backwards, which sounded as if they were saying the words "street angel" along with some other phrases. He wrote the song from those sounds. "I really like it when the idea for the song comes from outside and not within," Simon said during a promotional appearance. "I like to respond to the stimuli. It's more fun to edit than it is to face a blank page. These sounds and the way they sounded backwards were the lyrics that I used – 'took him away in an ambulance' was another example. It becomes an interesting story that I'm relating to the listener from someone else's narrative."

    The Golden Gate Quartet were previously sampled by Paul Simon in 2011 for his So Beautiful or So What track "Love & Blessings."
  • The "Street Angel" character appears again on another Stranger To Stranger track, "In a Parade."

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Chad Channing (Nirvana, Before Cars)

Chad Channing (Nirvana, Before Cars)Songwriter Interviews

Chad tells tales from his time as drummer for Nirvana, and talks about his group Before Cars.

Spot The Real Red Hot Chili Peppers Song Titles

Spot The Real Red Hot Chili Peppers Song TitlesMusic Quiz

The Red Hot Chili Peppers have some rather unusual song titles - see if you can spot the real ones.

Commercials

CommercialsFact or Fiction

Was "Ring Of Fire" really used to sell hemorrhoid cream?

Which Songs are About Drugs?

Which Songs are About Drugs?Fact or Fiction

"25 or 6 to 4" to "Semi-Charmed Life" - see if you can spot the songs that are really about drugs.

Janis Ian: Married in London, but not in New York

Janis Ian: Married in London, but not in New YorkSong Writing

Can you be married in one country but not another? Only if you're part of a gay couple. One of the first famous singers to come out as a lesbian, Janis wrote a song about it.

Sam Hollander

Sam HollanderSongwriter Interviews

The hitmaking songwriter/producer Sam Hollander with stories about songs for Weezer, Panic! At The Disco, Train, Pentatonix, and Fitz And The Tantrums.