"7 O'Clock News/Silent Night" is the twelfth and final track on Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, a 1966 album by Simon and Garfunkel. The track consists of an overdubbing of two contrasting recordings: a simple arrangement of the Christmas carol "Silent Night", and a simulated "7 O'Clock News" bulletin of the actual events of 3 August 1966.
The "Silent Night" track consists of Simon and Garfunkel singing the first verse twice over, accompanied by Garfunkel on piano. The voice of the newscaster is that of Charlie O'Donnell, then a radio disc jockey. As the track progresses, the song becomes fainter and the news report louder. Matthew Greenwald calls the effect "positively chilling". Bruce Eder describes the track as "a grim and ironic (and prophetic) comment on the state of the United States in 1966".
Read more about 7 O'Clock News/Silent Night: Events Reported in The News
Famous quotes containing the words news, silent and/or night:
“Charles Foster Kane: Look, Mr. Carter. Here is a three-column headline in the Chronicle. Why hasn’t the Inquirer a three-column headline?
Carter: News wasn’t big enough.
Charles Foster Kane: Mr. Carter, if the headline is big enough, it makes the news big enough.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1985)
“Ah! late I spoke to silent throngs,
And now their hour is come.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Love and forgetting might have carried them
A little further up the mountainside
With night so near, but not much further up.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)