“Wristband” by Paul Simon

"Wristband" was the first single from Stranger to Stranger, Paul Simon's 2016 album on Concord Records, produced by Roy Halee. Simon wrote it, and to build it he teamed up with Clap! Clap!, the Italian electronic dance artist his son Adrian had put him onto in 2015.

It starts out as a deadpan comedy: a rock musician stranded outside his own gig because he doesn't have the right wristband, sweet-talking a security guard and getting nowhere, not even near the backstage door. Then the camera pulls back, and the missing wristband becomes a symbol for the people who get shut out of everything and are furious about it. Writer Peter Ames Carlin called that jump from the personal to the social a very Paul Simon move. Simon has said the story isn't his own, though he knows plenty of people who've lived it and has been stopped backstage and asked for a pass himself.

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