Released September 1966 Recorded June–August 1966 Length 2:37 | Format 7" single Genre Folk rock Label Columbia Records | |
"The Dangling Conversation" is a song by American music duo Simon & Garfunkel, released in September 1966 as the second single from the duo's third studio album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966).
Contents
The song peaked at number 25 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Background
The theme is failed communication between lovers. The song starts in a room washed by shadows from the sun slanting through the lace curtains and ends with the room "softly faded." The two are as different as the poets they read: Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. Simon has compared this song to "The Sound of Silence", but says "The Dangling Conversation" is more personal.
Simon & Garfunkel's opinion of the song varied over time. According to biographer Peter Ames Carlin, they both considered it their favorite song on the album at the time of its release. Marc Eliot, who wrote Paul Simon: A Life, disputes this, arguing that Garfunkel always disliked the song and felt it was pretentious. When the single did not perform as well as they had hoped, Simon told Record Mirror's Norman Jopling that the song was "above the kids." In 1993, when asked about the song, he commented, "It's a college kid's song, a little precious."
Commercial performance
The song only climbed to 25 on the US charts and never made it onto the UK charts. Simon viewed "The Dangling Conversation" as an "absolutely amazing" disappointment to him at the time, as the previous three Simon & Garfunkel singles were reasonable "hits". He felt as though the song may have been "too heavy" for a mainstream audience.
Cover versions
Joan Baez included a cover of the song on her 1967 Joan album. She changed one of the lines to "Is the church really dead?" and Simon insisted that a line be inserted on the album's back cover that read: "Paul Simon asks Joan to note that the original line is, 'Is the theater really dead?'"
Les Fradkin has a dramatic version on his 2006 album, Jangleholic.