“The Afterlife” by Paul Simon

"The Afterlife" comes from So Beautiful or So What, Paul Simon's 12th studio album, released in 2011, and it plays the great beyond for laughs. A man dies, arrives in heaven and finds himself stuck in line with everyone else, filling out paperwork before he gets his audience with God; he tries his luck with a woman in the queue and gets nowhere, and when the big moment finally comes he can only babble.

Simon wrote it, sings it and plays 12-string guitar, with Cameroonian guitarist Vincent Nguini on electric guitar and Jim Oblon on drums and slide guitar. Phil Ramone produced with Simon and mixed it. Rolling Stone's Will Hermes gave it four stars and praised its rhyme-packed verses and supple grooves, and the Los Angeles Times heard a zydeco shuffle and an afterlife as dreary as the DMV. It reached number four on Billboard's Adult Alternative Songs chart.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.