The category of muso known as the “songwriter” occupies a very special, highly coveted, much praised and envied perch in the world of music. When the songwriter enters a room everyone goes quiet. They’re like the driver in the racing team. Nobody would have a job if it weren’t for their rare talents. They’re the ones that write those deceptively simple songs that the world can’t get enough of. Because of the perceived simplicity of ingenious songs, everybody has a go at one time or another, thinking to themselves, “How hard can it be?” Failure is probable, so they go back to being session musicians, roadies, sound engineers, waiters, construction workers etc.

Songwriters quietly earn the big bucks leaving the rest to fight over the leftovers. Noel Gallagher has always been about five times wealthier than Liam because he wrote all the great Oasis songs. No wonder Liam has issues. Amy Winehouse’s Valerie was written by a guy called Dave McCabe from a band called The Zutons (check out their version – pretty cool). He is a wealthy man who gets wealthier every time Valerie is played on the radio or TV.

Lennon and McCartney obviously both had/have the gift, and Harrison was no slouch. Bernie Taupin wrote lyrics then passed them on to his mate Elton John who put music to them – a legendary song writing partnership. Other dudes that you have to mention are Dylan, Bowie, Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, Brian Wilson and Neil Young. There’s also Prince, Michael Jackson, Morrissey, Kurt Cobain, Public Enemy and more recently Sufjan Stevens and Conor Oberst are getting cred, although it’s not like these guys are revolutionising music on the same level as their predecessors. Maybe Lady Gaga? Seriously, she’s a very good songwriter.

I was flicking through Rolling Stone recently and noticed that (another incredible songwriter) Paul Simon’s latest album, So Beautiful or So What, was listed as 2011’s third best, behind Adele and the JayZ/Kanye West collaboration. Has Paul Simon really found his mojo again? He lost it once before in the early 80’s after making an unloved album called Hearts and Bones. Then he found it again right here in South Africa after hearing the Boyoyo Boys’ instrumental “Gumboots: Accordion Jive Volume II”. He began singing over the top of the track and the rest, as they say, is history. His version of Gumboots would later become the fourth track on the album Graceland, an astoundingly original collection of songs that captured the world’s imagination once again and went on to sell 14 million copies. Things have been up and down since then, but when you’ve been part of Simon and Garfunkel, the world forgives the odd hiccup very easily.

Will Hermes of Rolling Stone describes Graceland as having “world hugging bounce” – which is so on the money. You have to love lines like, “There’s a girl in New York City, who calls herself the human trampoline.” The whole album is quite upbeat yet still manages to be fragile and thought provoking. In the song Graceland, which includes the cartoonish line above, there are a few verses after the first chorus where he sings, “She comes back to tell me she’s gone, as if I didn’t know that, as if I didn’t know my own bed, as if I’d never noticed the way she brushed her hair from her forehead. And she said losing love is like a window in your heart, everybody sees you’re blown apart, everybody sees the wind blow.” For that moment of music right there, Paul Simon deserves your attention when he releases some new material.

In this new album, there is some heavy subject matter: mortality, love, beauty, brutality, but as in Graceland, the songs never feel heavy or depressing. There’s a subtlety to the way he writes songs. It’s music that operates on multiple levels, like those optical illusion posters in the 90’s – if you stared long enough and squinted slightly you’d suddenly see a 3D dinosaur or a motorbike or something. That’s what this music is like. It starts off as well written words and music, but if you keep on listening, something else emerges. It’s the same with his voice. It doesn’t immediately strike you as a mind blowing singing voice. But it has a kind of humility to it. Sometimes a huge voice can obstruct the message of the song.

In the song The Afterlife, the protagonist finds that, having died, getting into heaven is more like a visit to Home Affairs than the blissful ascent he imagined: “You got to fill out a form first, and then you wait in the line.” There are no short cuts in heaven, no one gets a fast track to the top, which makes sense if you think about it: “Buddha and Moses and all the noses, from narrow to flat, had to stand in the line just to glimpse the divine, what’cha think about that? Well, it seems like our fate, to suffer and wait for the knowledge we seek. It’s all His design, no one cuts in the line; no one here likes a sneak.”

That dry, conversational wit, in a song about what happens to us when we die – well, that’s just pure class in my books. Especially when set over a distinctly African rhythm. What boundaries?

This is the music of one of the world’s great songwriters. A true artist who has spent his entire career going back to the drawing board and starting almost from scratch. Not because he has to, but because he would rather fail a thousand times than repeat himself over and over again. This approach to music, by its very nature, has resulted in some monumental highs, but also some catastrophic failures. So Beautiful or So What is way up there with Paul Simon’s best. It’s the sound of a wise old man teaching the kids a lesson and even if you find it difficult to relate right now, it deserves to be kept around for a rainy day. It’s kind of like he’s saying: death? Yeah, it happens to the best of us. What are you gonna do?