Paul Simon paid a visit to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Monday night (Jan. 28) to perform two tracks from his latest album In the Blue Light and talk about the making of the record, which features re-recordings of Simon’s lesser-known songs.
The esteemed singer-songwriter first performed a re-imagined version of “Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War,” a surrealist song he wrote in the 1980s; the track is based off of a picture of a couple and their pet dog he once saw. Simon then performed a jazzier “One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor” with The Late Show’s Jon Batiste & Stay Human. A full band showcased the dynamic rhythm and blues of the track.
“It’s just apartment house rules, so all you ‘partment house fools/ Remember one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor/ One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor,” Simon sang.
He added that In the Blue Light, which was released last September, was a way to revisit some of the songs he wrote in years prior , not only to cover them, but to “fix” them. “I picked 10 songs that I thought were really interesting and good songs that didn’t get much attention when they first came out, either because they were on an album that had a bunch of hits or they were on an album that had no hits,” Simon told Colbert. “It’s really quite a treat as a composer and have the opportunity to go back and fix your mistakes.”
Watch the performance here.
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