Simon & Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water

This album is quintessential Simon & Garfunkel, with the title track holding it's rightful place as the best song of the 20th century. It was a musical signpost of a turbulent time in the world and somehow excapsulated the pain, fear, worry, sorrow, anger and hope we felt at the time. But beyond that, it's an amazing recording, a mix of the carefully engineered sounds of songs like "The Boxer" with the last minute rewrite in the recording in the studio that made the title track a timeless classic.

Bridge Over Troubled Water is an excellent example of early Simon & Garfunkel. It's actually quite dark in places, including tracks such as "Cecilia" and "The Only Living Boy In New York" and these serve to bring down the silly sweetness of some of the lighter songs. I find that when Paul Simon wrote about more serious subjects the songs are extremely memorable, but there's a couple of attempts at jocularity, notably "Bye Bye Love" and "Baby Driver," which grate horribly. On the whole this is a fantastic album of unusually arranged folk songs with a couple of perfect moments in the form of "The Only Living Boy in New York" and "The Boxer." It is a real classic '60's folk record.