America (Simon & Garfunkel song)

"America" is a song performed by American music duo Simon & Garfunkel, which they included on their fourth studio album, Bookends, in 1968.The song was later issued as the B-side of the single "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her (live version)" in 1972 to promote the release of the compilation album Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits.The song was written and composed by Paul Simon, and concerns young lovers hitchhiking their way across the United States, in search of "America", in both a literal and figurative sense.The soaring harmony lines and crashing cymbals create a powerful and poignant end to the song's final verse: "They've all come to look for America."[9] Pete Fornatale interprets this lyric as a "metaphor to remind us all of the lost souls wandering the highways and byways of mid-sixties America, struggling to navigate the rapids of despair and hope, optimism and disillusionment.It is three and a half minutes of sheer brilliance, whose unforced narrative, alternating precise detail with sweeping observation evokes the panorama of restless, paved America and simultaneously illuminates a drama of shared loneliness on a bus trip with cosmic implications.[7] David Nichols, in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, called the song "a splendid vignette of a road trip by young lovers; both intimate and epic in scale, it traces an inner journey from naive optimism to more mature understanding."[8] Disc jockey and author Pete Fornatale describes "America" as one of Paul Simon's "greatest writing achievements in this phase of his career".[6] In 2014, a Rolling Stone readers poll ranked it fourth among the duo's best compositions, with the magazine writing, "it captured America's sense of restlessness and confusion during the year that saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as the escalation of the war in Vietnam", declaring it one of their most "beloved" songs.An early scene in the film, set in 1968, finds the free-spirited character "Anita" (Zooey Deschanel) playing the song for her mother (Frances McDormand) to "... explain why [she] is leaving home to become a stewardess".[18] In their earlier incarnation as 1-2-3, they had performed a re-written version of the song that included elements similar to those later used by Yes; changes in time signature, classical interludes, newly written segments, etc.A live tape exists of this being performed at the Marquee in April 1967, prior to the release of any known recording by any artist, including Paul Simon, himself.[19] The song was rearranged by the progressive rock band Yes in 1970, performing it in concert on the first tour after Steve Howe replaced Peter Banks.Yes added elements typical to progressive rock, such as changes in time signature and long instrumental segments, while dropping the song's original repeat and fade ending.