| Sounds of Silence | ||||
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | January 17, 1966 | |||
| Recorded |
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| Studio | Columbia 7th Ave, New York City | |||
| Genre | Folk rock[1] | |||
| Length | 29:09 | |||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Producer | Bob Johnston, Tom Wilson | |||
| Simon & Garfunkel chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Sounds of Silence | ||||
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Sounds of Silence is the second studio album by the American folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel, released on January 17, 1966. The album's title is a slight modification of the title of the duo's first major hit, "The Sound of Silence", which originally was released as "The Sounds of Silence".[2] The song had earlier been released in an acoustic version on the album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., and later on the soundtrack to the movie The Graduate. Without the knowledge of Paul Simon or Art Garfunkel, electric guitars, bass and drums were overdubbed under the direction of Columbia Records staff producer Tom Wilson on June 15, 1965.[3][4] This new version was released as a single in September 1965, and opens the album.
"Homeward Bound" was released on the album in the UK, placed at the beginning of Side 2 before "Richard Cory". It was later released in the US on the following album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. It was also released as part of the box set Simon & Garfunkel Collected Works, on both LP and CD. Many of the songs in the album had been written by Paul Simon while he lived in London during 1965.
Solo acoustic versions of "I Am a Rock", "Leaves That Are Green", "April Come She Will", "A Most Peculiar Man", and "Kathy's Song" had appeared on The Paul Simon Songbook, released in August 1965 in England as had another version of the title track. "Richard Cory" was based on the poem "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson, "Somewhere They Can't Find Me" was essentially a rewrite of the previous album's "Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.", "We've Got a Groovy Thing Goin'" had appeared on the b-side of "The Sound of Silence" a few months before and "Anji" was a cover of an instrumental piece by guitarist Davey Graham whom Simon had met in England. Hence the only brand new Paul Simon composition on the album was "Blessed".
The album is also included in its entirety as part of the Simon & Garfunkel box sets Collected Works and The Columbia Studio Recordings (1964–1970). On March 22, 2013, it was announced that the album will be preserved by the Library of Congress in the National Recording Registry, calling it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
| Review scores | |
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| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |    link |
| Record Mirror | [5] |
- ^ DeBolt, Abbe Allen (2011). Encyclopedia of the Sixties: A Decade of Culture and Counterculture. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 604. ISBN 978-0313329449.
- ^ Mastropolo, Frank (March 10, 2015). "51 Years Ago: Simon & Garfunkel Record Their First Classic, 'The Sounds of Silence'". Ultimate Classic Rock.
- ^ Simons, David (2004). Studio Stories – How the Great New York Records Were Made. San Francisco: Backbeat Books. ISBN 978-0-87930-817-9. Cf. pp.94–97.
- ^ Charlesworth, Chris, The Complete Guide to the Music of Paul Simon and Simon & Garfunkel, Omnibus Press 1996. Cf. especially pp.17–18 on Sound of Silence.
- ^ Jones, Peter; Jopling, Norman (30 April 1966). "Simon ANd Garfunkel: Sounds Of Silence" (PDF). Record Mirror. No. 268. p. 8. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 April 2022. Retrieved 22 August 2022.