"The Sound of Silence" - Simon & Garfunkel

This is a good song. Before this class, I had only heard the cover by Disturbed (which I would highly recommend listening to. It's epic.) The original by Simon & Garfunkel is a lot different than the cover, let me tell ya. It's not a flashy song but it picks up a little bit after the first verse. The first verse is pretty simple, just mostly vocals and a simple guitar in the background. The vocals are pretty consistent throughout the song, there's not a lot of varying in the harmonies or melodies. Although it's a lot of the same vocals, the singers have nice voices and the harmony works really well together so it's not a terrible tragedy that the song is a little bit repetitive. I think the best part about the song is by far the lyrics. The lyrics are very poetic and beautiful. Like the title says, the song is about the "sound of silence", which sounds like a contradiction but somehow it works. Basically the song is talking about how people struggle to communicate with each other and all the things that we don't say to each other build up and there's almost a palpable silence between people. The words, "People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening", really paint a picture of what it's like in the world sometimes. Things can be so shallow and sometimes people tend to focus on the shallow, surface things instead of really being there for the people around them and listening to what they need. This is a pretty deep song that's not too bad to listen to. I'm still a bigger fan of the Disturbed version, but this version deserves a lot of credit for being the original (big shout out to the lyricist).