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Paul Simon

Singer-songwriter, two-time Album of the Year winner

Music United States Hall No. 64

Profile

Why they shine

Paul Simon has won Album of the Year twice on his own, for Still Crazy After All These Years in 1976 and Graceland in 1987, adding a third with Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water in 1971. A Newark-born songwriter who has been winning Grammys since 1966, he rebuilt his career three times: first as the lyric half of Simon & Garfunkel, then as a jazz-inflected solo stylist, then as the inventor of Graceland, the album recorded in Johannesburg that introduced Zulu vocal traditions to a global audience and helped push world music into the mainstream despite the cultural boycott politics surrounding it.

Full name: Paul Frederic Simon
Nationality: United States
Born: October 13, 1941, Newark, New Jersey
Album of the Year wins: 3 — including Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water
Solo wins: Still Crazy After All These Years (1976), Graceland (1987)
Other honours: Gershwin Prize, Kennedy Center Honors, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice

Record

Honor record

Grammy Award for Album of the Year

1976 · Feb 28, 1976

Los Angeles, California

Still Crazy After All These Years won Album of the Year at the 18th Grammy Awards, Simon's first solo win in the category. The record, cut with a crack lineup of New York session players, also produced his only solo number-one single, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.

Grammy Award for Album of the Year

1987 · Feb 24, 1987

Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles

Graceland won Album of the Year at the 29th Grammy Awards, vindicating Simon's Johannesburg sessions after years of controversy over the anti-apartheid cultural boycott. The record sold more than fourteen million copies and changed the sound of American pop.

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