Partly Cloudy, 64°
According to a study released today by the Pew Research Center, 100 percent of American musicians named Paul Simon wrote and recorded the Grammy Award-winning 1986 album, “Graceland.”
“We have conducted exhaustive research in the field of Paul Simon’s discography and have found definitively that every musician born Paul Frederic Simon in Newark, N.J., created and produced the classic album ‘Graceland,’” lead researcher Michelle Patterson said, noting that 0 percent of musicians with the names Carl Dunbar or Michael Jefferies wrote or recorded any of the tracks featured on the world music-inflected pop classic. “We can also say with relative certainty that all musicians named Paul Simon who had previously been members of folk duo Simon & Garfunkel helped write and record the albums ‘Bookends,’ ‘Sounds of Silence,’ and ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water.’”
“Conversely, no musicians named Patrick O’Brien or Michael ‘Brickhead’ Thompson helped write or record those albums,” Patterson added. “They’ve made different albums.”
“Furthermore, our studies suggest that musicians named Paul Simon have not recorded the albums ‘Meet the Beatles,’ ‘Daydream Nation,’ or ‘The Eminem Show,’" Patterson continued, adding that it is also statistically unlikely that Paul Simon wrote or recorded Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” or Bach’s “Brandenburg Concertos.” “At this time, it seems that musicians named Paul Simon have primarily been involved in the production of those albums attributed to Paul Simon or Simon & Garfunkel. This includes the album ‘Graceland’; Paul Simon did, in fact, write the songs on ‘Graceland.’”
A related Pew study also found that 0 percent of musicians named Q.R. Clamface Fickleberry wrote and recorded the album “Clamface’s Trial” because that is a fake person and album.
