“The Sound of Silence” Is the Most Met­al Song of the Past Decade”: imag­ine that head­line, and the con­trar­i­an cul­ture piece prac­ti­cal­ly writes itself. Not so long ago, Slate was noto­ri­ous for pub­lish­ing that kind of thing, but it seems they’ve now put that sen­si­bil­i­ty behind them — or at least most­ly behind them. “If you’re in the mood for an under­dog sto­ry,” writes that site’s Luke Winkie, “I rec­om­mend perus­ing Bill­board­’s Hard Rock Dig­i­tal Song Sales chart. It is home to, gen­uine­ly, one of the most sub­stan­tial feats of endurance in the his­to­ry of pop­u­lar music, and it shows no sign of slow­ing down any­time soon. I speak, of course, of Dis­turbed’s cov­er of the Simon & Gar­funkel clas­sic ‘The Sound of Silence,’ which has been at, or near, the apex of that chart since 2015.”

While you almost cer­tain­ly know Simon & Gar­funkel, you may not know Dis­turbed, who’ve been steadi­ly pop­u­lar in the met­al world since the release of their debut album The Sick­ness in 2000. Lis­ten to that album’s big sin­gle “Down with the Sick­ness,” and you’re instant­ly trans­port­ed back to the turn of the mil­len­ni­um, when the exag­ger­at­ed­ly rhyth­mic and aggres­sive sub­genre of “nu met­al” reigned supreme.

Enter­tain­ing though the sheer incon­gruity of a nu-met­al ver­sion of “The Sound of Silence” would be, that move­ment had long since flamed out by 2015, when Dis­turbed record­ed their cov­er of Simon & Gar­funkel’s sig­na­ture song. Instead, they take the haunt­ing aus­ter­i­ty of the orig­i­nal in a grand­ly mourn­ful direc­tion, dri­ven by piano, strings, and the kind of cav­ernous sen­si­tiv­i­ty in which met­al acts occa­sion­al­ly indulge.

“Simon & Garfunkel’s ver­sion is best suit­ed for The Grad­u­ate,” writes Winkie, “while Dis­turbed’s take seems tuned for the end-cred­its scroll of a Trans­form­ers flick.” Inclu­sion in a Hol­ly­wood block­buster might have explained the song’s decade-long dom­i­nance of the afore­men­tioned Hard Rock Dig­i­tal Song Sales chart: a minor are­na in itself, but one in which this per­pet­u­al vic­to­ry reflects a wider cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non. Though young peo­ple may nev­er have heard Dis­turbed’s “The Sound of Silence” — or indeed Simon & Gar­funkel’s — it’s drawn intense and abid­ing enthu­si­asm from lis­ten­ers in their six­ties, sev­en­ties, and eight­ies, for whose approval met­al bands haven’t con­ven­tion­al­ly angled. Nev­er­the­less, it had to mark a high point in Dis­turbed’s career when, after per­form­ing the song on Conan, they received high praise from one par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­tin­guished mem­ber of that demo­graph­ic: a cer­tain Paul Simon.

via Slate

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Simon & Gar­funkel Sing “The Sound of Silence” 45 Years After Its Release, and Just Get Haunt­ing­ly Bet­ter with Time

Paul Simon Tells the Sto­ry of How He Wrote “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water” (1970)

Paul Simon Decon­structs “Mrs. Robin­son” (1970)

Fred Armisen & Bill Hader’s Comedic Take on the His­to­ry of Simon and Gar­funkel

Who Invent­ed Heavy Met­al Music?: A Search for Ori­gins

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Welsh croon­er Tom Jones made an unlike­ly come­back in the late 80s, cov­er­ing Prince’s “Kiss” with Art of Noise. Then in the mid-90s, he showed up on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air to sing the mid-60s hit “It’s Not Unusu­al” for super­fan Carl­ton Banks. This was a time of 60s come­backs all around, but Jones’ resur­gence was a lit­tle odd (though per­fect­ly in char­ac­ter for Carl­ton Banks). Tom Jones had been a big star in the mid to late 60s, with his own TV show and a string of inter­na­tion­al hits. But Tom Jones was nev­er exact­ly cool in the way that, say, Neil Young was cool in 1969, the year he and Jimi Hen­drix stole a truck to get to Wood­stock.

“Tom Jones and his show might’ve been seen as some­what ‘square’ by the rock­star stan­dards of CSNY,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds,” but when the four­some agreed to appear in Sep­tem­ber of that year, just weeks after the mas­sive fes­ti­val in upstate New York, it turned into a mem­o­rable tele­vi­sion event, with Jones tak­ing lead vocals on “Long Time Gone” and blow­ing the audi­ence and the band away.

“The man’s mighty lungs inspire the rest of them to keep up, it must be said,” even Young, whose “face goes from one of disdain/’What am I doing here?’ to ‘This fuck­ing rocks’ about halfway through.”

Even stranger than this com­bi­na­tion is the fact that Young agreed to do it at all. He had become noto­ri­ous­ly averse to doing tele­vi­sion, even turn­ing down The Tonight Show with John­ny Car­son and cit­ing his hatred of TV as a rea­son for leav­ing Buf­fa­lo Spring­field two years ear­li­er. Though he may have been caught up in the moment, he lat­er regret­ted it, as his long­time man­ag­er Eliot Roberts told biog­ra­ph­er Jim­my McDo­nough: “Neil went, ‘The Tom Jones show! What pos­sessed you? It’s that shit.’ He always used to say ‘that shit.’ Cros­by had this weed of doom… Neil nev­er for­gave me for that. He ripped me about it for a very, very long time. Years.”

“It was high­ly rat­ed,” says Roberts, “sold a lot­ta records, but in ret­ro­spect it was embar­rass­ing.” Young prob­a­bly shouldn’t have wor­ried. Weed of doom or no, it didn’t seem to hurt his cred­i­bil­i­ty as much as his bewil­der­ing (though crit­i­cal­ly re-appraised) 1982 New Wave record, Trans. Jones has done just fine, rein­vent­ing him­self in the 80s and 90s in good-humored self-par­o­dies, then becom­ing a bona fide pop star once more. He has yet to appear again with Neil Young.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2020.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Janis Joplin & Tom Jones Bring the House Down in an Unlike­ly Duet of “Raise Your Hand” (1969)

Tom Jones Cov­ers Talk­ing Heads “Burn­ing Down the House”–and Burns Down the House (1999)

David Gilmour, David Cros­by & Gra­ham Nash Per­form the Pink Floyd Clas­sic, “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond” (2006)

Tom Jones & Chuck Berry Per­form Togeth­er, Singing “Roll Over Beethoven” & “Mem­phis” (1974)

The Time Neil Young Met Charles Man­son, Liked His Music, and Tried to Score Him a Record Deal

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Miles Davis did­n’t put out any stu­dio albums from 1973 until the mid­dle of 1981. In explain­ing the rea­sons for this lacu­na in his record­ing career, Milesol­o­gists can point to a vari­ety of fac­tors in the man’s pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al life. But one in par­tic­u­lar looms large: the fail­ure of his 1972 album On the Cor­ner. Davis was­n’t known for occu­py­ing any one style of jazz for very long, to put it mild­ly, but the On the Cor­ner ses­sions find him very near­ly break­ing with jazz itself. In a bid to recap­ture the atten­tion of young black lis­ten­ers, he took the plunge into a mix of what he lat­er described as “Stock­hausen plus funk plus Ornette Cole­man.”

“Miles want­ed the kids who were into rock,” writes Jaz­zTimes’ Col­in Flem­ing. “That was the tar­get demo, an audi­ence he’d been court­ing since 1970’s Bitch­es Brew. He played for that audi­ence on the psy­che­del­ic ball­room cir­cuit, doing so with rock groups — the Steve Miller Band, for instance — that he had no respect for as musi­cians. Davis thought he was slum­ming it while shar­ing such bills, but he also believed in the lis­ten­ing skills of youth, which is usu­al­ly a wise thing to do.” “The result­ing, seem­ing­ly incon­gru­ous mix of musi­cal expe­ri­ences and desires led him and a host of col­lab­o­ra­tors — includ­ing Her­bie Han­cock, John McLaugh­lin, Chick Corea, and James Mtume — to make ‘one holy hell of a groov­ing, min­i­mal­ist rack­et.’”

Upon its release, On the Cor­ner “was derid­ed as an affront to taste, an insult to lis­ten­ers, a sham per­pet­u­at­ed by a man who want­ed to rub your face in some­thing most unpleas­ant, just because he thought he could.” And yet, hear­ing it in this era — as I did not long ago while lis­ten­ing through Davis’ entire discog­ra­phy — you’d strug­gle to under­stand the source of the offense. Indeed, a twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry lis­ten­er may well be more trou­bled by Corky McCoy’s infa­mous cov­er art, with its stereo­typ­i­cal street scene whose char­ac­ters range from pros­ti­tute to pimp, hus­tler to homo­sex­u­al. The image has been described as “ghet­todel­ic,” a word that could also label the inchoate musi­cal sub­genre Davis was attempt­ing to forge.

The cul­ture has long since caught up with the par­tic­u­lar son­ic exper­i­ment run in On the Cor­ner, which “has been hailed in recent years as the album that helped birth hip-hop, funk, post-punk, elec­tron­i­ca, and just about any oth­er pop­u­lar music with a repet­i­tive beat, which was quite the feat for a record that not many peo­ple have ever lis­tened to.” But if you join those ranks, you can hard­ly avoid notic­ing the tex­tures its son­ic col­lage shares with pop­u­lar gen­res of the past few decades, thanks not least to the splic­ing, and loop­ing that was the spe­cial­ty of pro­duc­er Teo Macero (also Davis’ col­lab­o­ra­tor on Sketch­es of Spain, In a Silent Way, and Bitch­es Brew). Maybe, when all this proved to be a bit much for the ear­ly sev­en­ties, Davis had no choice but to take a break, hav­ing final­ly got­ten a few too many miles ahead.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear a 65-Hour, Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Miles Davis’ Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Jazz Albums

Miles Davis Icon­ic 1959 Album Kind of Blue Turns 60: Revis­it the Album That Changed Amer­i­can Music

Miles Davis’ Bitch­es Brew Turns 50: Cel­e­brate the Funk-Jazz-Psych-Rock Mas­ter­piece

The Night When Miles Davis Opened for the Grate­ful Dead (1970)

Miles Davis’ Entire Discog­ra­phy Pre­sent­ed in a Styl­ish Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion

Miles Davis Opens for Neil Young and “That Sor­ry-Ass Cat” Steve Miller at The Fill­more East (1970)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.