Paul Simon announced a new album called In the Blue Light last month, with a tracklist entirely consisting of reworkings of previously recorded Simon originals. Simon said in a statement at the time that he hoped that “re-doing arrangements, harmonic structures, and lyrics that didn’t make their meaning clear [would]…realize what I was thinking and make it more easily understood.” Today, he’s released his new version of the oldest song included in the collection, the There Goes Rhymin’ Simon album track “One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor.” The new version of the song, originally released in 1973, is not that drastically reworked from its first recording, but is amped up a bit to channel a honky-tonk bar band aesthetic. There’s some early-rock-n’-roll-style slapback ‘verb on Simon’s vocals, and some prodigious blues-piano comping.
In The Blue Light is due out on September 7, and features contributions from Wynton Marsalis, Bryce Dessner, Bill Frisell, Jack DeJohnette, Steve Gadd, and more. Listen to “One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor” below.
https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/0f4xwbRqEvq46u0pT34D3E
