Surprise (Paul Simon Album) - History

History

After the relative success of You're the One, which was released in late 2000 finding Simon back to the Top 20 of the American charts after ten years of absence and also receiving a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year, Paul Simon spent most of the following two years promoting the album. In 2002 he took a year off, and during 2003 and 2004 had a widely documented reunion with Art Garfunkel, followed by a Simon & Garfunkel comeback tour. During June and July 2004, the duo extensively toured America and Europe and the concerts were registered on both a live album and video that was released by the end of the year. Also in December 2004, Paul Simon's studio albums were re-released in remastered issues, as well as re-promoted.

At this point, Simon was fully involved in the writing and recording of a new studio album. He was introduced to Brian Eno, producer of Talking Heads and U2 among others.

According to Simon, one of the first songs written for the album was "Wartime Prayers", which became one of the most celebrated tracks of the album and later a concert favourite. Simon commented that, in some kind of premonition, the song was written even before the Iraq invasion in 2003. Soon after, early recording for the album began. The album was recorded in London, New York and Nashville. Simon first met with Brian Eno in London to discuss a collaboration between Eno's electronic production and Simon's classic guitar folk-rock. As Simon said, "We spent some time in his studio and decided to combine our visions. It took about two years. The actual time I spent with Brian was 20 days, split into four periods. We found we could really work intensely for five days, and after that it was a bit of a burnout."