“You Can Call Me Al” by Paul Simon

"You Can Call Me Al" was the lead single from Graceland, Paul Simon's seventh album, released on Warner Bros. in 1986, and it's a bouncing, brass-blasted hymn to a midlife crisis. The names came from a party where the composer Pierre Boulez mistakenly called Simon "Al" and his then-wife Peggy Harper "Betty", and Simon's trip to South Africa fed into the lyrics too.

The band is the story. Ray Phiri's guitar chimes and he helped arrange it, Bakithi Kumalo's bass pops and slides, Isaac Mtshali keeps the beat skipping, Morris Goldberg blows the tin whistle solo, and a horn section of Randy Brecker, Lew Soloff, Jon Faddis and friends punches through, with Adrian Belew adding guitar synthesizer. It went top five in seven countries and became one of Simon's biggest solo hits.

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