The album flop that led to Paul Simon leaving Columbia Records
The record label is a difficult beast to tame. The music industry is a difficult one to be a part of because it is one of the only industries out there that runs solely on subjectivity. If you think about something like a vacuum cleaner, that’s an easy enough market to navigate; you need to make a vacuum that works and get it in front of the right people. Music doesn’t work like that.
You could have all the funding in the world, get the song played on every radio station, plaster posters of the record across city centres everywhere, and get significant record stores to put it in the window display, but if people don’t like the track, it won’t sell. It’s as simple as that.
The same goes for hidden gems; often, a track might not be the most funded, but it can find its way through word of mouth. That being said, the hidden gem is hard to come by; there are many songs out there that would no doubt be classics if they could find the audience but were simply unable to.
How well a track does or doesn’t do comes down to the record label. They need to give artists the right amount of time and effort so that the record comes together in a way that looks good, is effective, and, most importantly, will sell. This means having an in-depth marketing strategy, plenty of budget, and generally giving the artist room to promote their work.
Paul Simon, it goes without saying, has enjoyed an incredibly successful career. Whether this was with Art Garfunkel or on his own, he has always been able to put together exciting music that is equally moving and fun to listen to. He is, without a doubt, one of the best songwriters of his generation, as he continued to have an excellent knowledge of what goes into a song and an innate ability to critique his work.
For instance, in ‘Slip Slidin’ Away’, despite it being a moving song about people abandoning their passions, Simon could look at it and find issues with how it was put together; the only problem was they were issues that he couldn’t avoid. He felt as though the chorus appeared one too many times, but to even it out, he would have to get rid of a verse, and given how vital the narrative of the piece was, that was a move he wasn’t willing to make. “I always felt that the record and the song stayed on a plateau. It didn’t build,” he said.
The song didn’t do very well, but the extra chorus wasn’t the deciding factor in the dwindling sales; instead, the issue was that the record label didn’t fund the album it was on and gave it little to no promotion. Greatest Hits, Etc ended up flopping, and Simon felt like he had been hung out to dry by his label as a result.
The reason for this was that Columbia Records had recently had a change in management. Clive Davis, who always championed Simon, had left; instead, the new regime championed a different style of musician. Not satisfied with the treatment he was receiving, Simon opted to leave the record label and instead signed for Warner Bros. The failure of the album led to a massive career change for Simon, one that ended up suiting him and his solo career a lot better.