Paul Simon Talks Reworking Old Songs For ‘In the Blue Light’ Album On ‘The Late Show’

Paul Simon paid a visit to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert​ on Monday night (Jan. 28) to perform two tracks from his latest album In the Blue Light and talk about the making of the record, which features re-recordings of Simon’s lesser-known songs.

The esteemed singer-songwriter first performed a re-imagined version of “Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War,” a surrealist song he wrote in the 1980s; the track is based off of a picture of a couple and their pet dog he once saw. Simon then performed a jazzier “One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor” with The Late Show’s Jon Batiste & Stay Human. A full band showcased the dynamic rhythm and blues of the track.

“It’s just apartment house rules, so all you ‘partment house fools/ Remember one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor/ One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor,” Simon sang.

He added that In the Blue Light, which was released last September, was a way to revisit some of the songs he wrote in years prior , not only to cover them, but to “fix” them. “I picked 10 songs that I thought were really interesting and good songs that didn’t get much attention when they first came out, either because they were on an album that had a bunch of hits or they were on an album that had no hits,” Simon told Colbert. “It’s really quite a treat as a composer and have the opportunity to go back and fix your mistakes.”

Watch the performance here.

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Photo Credit: Alexander Mazurkevich / Shutterstock.com