I was rather sad to read, in an interview with Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin, that Paul Simon didn’t actually write most of the songs on Graceland, took credit for writing them, and then told Los Lobos to sue him and see what would happen. Although I think what probably happened was that Los Lobos wrote a lot of the music (along with the African musicians on the album) and Simon came in, dicked with it, and wrote his own lyrics and melodies over it. I mean, most of it just sounds like Paul Simon anyway.
But that’s still really fucked up and sad.
Wow. That is sad. That’s one of my favorite albums too, and I had no idea.
From what I understand, the recording industry is rife with these deals where a major star will actually buy the writing credits from the original writer of a song. So on the liner notes it says he/she “wrote” the music or lyrics when they actually didn’t.