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

Amanda Palmer

Amanda PalmerSongwriter Interviews

Call us crazy, but we like it when an artist comes around who doesn't mesh with the status quo.

Ben Kowalewicz of Billy Talent

Ben Kowalewicz of Billy TalentSongwriter Interviews

The frontman for one of Canada's most well-known punk rock bands talks about his Eddie Vedder encounter, Billy Talent's new album, and the importance of rock and roll.

Chris Frantz of Talking Heads

Chris Frantz of Talking HeadsSongwriter Interviews

Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz on where the term "new wave" originated, the story of "Naive Melody," and why they never recorded another cover song after "Take Me To The River."

Lace the Music: How LSD Changed Popular Music

Lace the Music: How LSD Changed Popular MusicSong Writing

Starting in Virginia City, Nevada and rippling out to the Haight-Ashbury, LSD reshaped popular music.

Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull

Ian Anderson of Jethro TullSongwriter Interviews

The flautist frontman talks about touring with Led Zeppelin, his contribution to "Hotel California", and how he may have done the first MTV Unplugged.

Kelly Keagy of Night Ranger

Kelly Keagy of Night RangerSongwriter Interviews

Kelly Keagy of Night Ranger tells the "Sister Christian" story and explains why he started sweating when he saw it in Boogie Nights.