When we were in fifth grade we adored Paul Simon's Graceland. And we think that when you like something at that young of an age that even when ya get older and find out how lame that thing really was ya can't help but still enjoy it. Sure, we've long known that Graceland is about as embarrassingly yuppie-fied as you can get: it's got that awfully dated '80s gated reverb production, that middle-aged, upper-class worldview, and that shameful appropriation of Apartheid folk music masqueradin' as enlightened multi-culturalism. Oof. And just recently discovered that ol' Rhymin' Simon downright stole one of Los Lobos' working tunes, put it on his record, and then didn't give the guys any credit for writin' it! Geez, that's pretty indefensible, right? What a jerk! Makes us wanna chuck that Graceland cassette out the car window and listen to Big Black instead!
But then when we hear a line like "Crazy Love, Vol II"'s "sad as a lonely little wrinkled balloon" and start thinking 'bout when we learned long division...well, we just put all that stuff aside and smile.
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