“The Boxer” by Simon and Garfunkel

"The Boxer" came out as a standalone single on March 21, 1969, the follow-up to "Mrs. Robinson", and only ten months later found a home on Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon and Garfunkel's fifth and final studio album, an unusual move at the time. Paul Simon wrote it and produced it with Art Garfunkel and Roy Halee.

It's a folk-rock ballad that shifts between a first-person lament and a sketch of a boxer, and it's largely autobiographical, written when Simon felt he was being unfairly attacked, with echoes of the Bible and a heavy weight of poverty and loneliness. The session players make it huge: Hal Blaine's drums, Joe Osborn's bass, Larry Knechtel's keyboards, Fred Carter Jr.'s guitar beside Simon's, and strings, all building to that wordless refrain and a snare drum drowned in reverb. It climbed to number seven on the Hot 100.

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