Simon and Garfunkle

The duo responsible for "hello darkness my old friend" are at first glance, meme worthy themselves, but if you can appreciate eloquent yet enthralling lyrics along with well dispersed, buoyant tracks, I'd recommend a second glance.

Although the fact that they were a folk/rock group from the 60's will lose some of you, they deserve credit for bringing their genre back to New York, encouraging the growing revival of folk music with "The Sound of Silence" single and second album. Their third album "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme" introduced them to fame, coming off of some

Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon entertaining 500,000 nationwide college tours. Mike

at The Concert in Central Park in 1981. Nichols' "The Graduate" snatched

their music, which in turn aided the

films' success greatly. From then on, all you need to know is that although the older they got, the greater the difference in creativity grew, and this was either reflected or foreshadowed in their work. But thankfully they got together once in awhile to drop some chart toppers under the genre of rock and will be forever one of the greatest music duos of all time.

The first song that drew me to this solid group was "The Only Living Boy in New York" which, in my opinion is a reflection of how Paul Simon felt about Artie at a point in time as he uses Artie's stage name, Tom, from when they were first a group. To really generalize it, in the song he expresses his support and encourages Artie, and reminds him that although he is in Mexico shooting a film, he is the only one in New York who understands Artie as their indie way of life, mirrored in their music, was rare. Affection like this is unconventional and moving because of the momentous simplicity of the words in the song. The lonely "here I am" gives you a transparent view of Paul's feelings, and even provokes your feelings until you too, feel the same way.

Over the course of their career, Simon & Garfunkel's music gradually moved from a basic folk rock sound to incorporate more experimental elements for the time, including Latin and gospel music. Their music, according to Rolling Stone, struck a chord among lonely, alienated young adults near the end of the decade.

Simon & Garfunkel received criticism at the height of their success. In 1968, Rolling Stone critic Arthur Schmidt described their music as "questionable ... it exudes a sense of process, and it is slick, and nothing too much happens." New York Times critic Robert Shelton said that the duo had "a kind of Mickey Mouse, timid, contrived" approach. According to Richie Unterberger of AllMusic, their clean sound and muted lyricism "cost them some hipness points during the psychedelic era ... the pair inhabited the more polished end of the folk-rock spectrum and was sometimes criticized for a certain collegiate sterility." He noted that some critics regard Simon's later solo work as superior to Simon & Garfunkel.

According to Pitchfork, though Simon & Garfunkel were a highly regarded folk act "distinguished by their intuitive harmonies and Paul Simon's articulate songwriting", they were more conservative than the folk music revivalists of Greenwich Village. By the late 1960s, they had become the "folk establishment ... primarily unthreatening and accessible, which forty years later makes them an ideal gateway act to the weirder, harsher, more complex folkies of the 60s counterculture". However, their later albums explored more ambitious production techniques and incorporated elements of gospel, rock, R&B, and classical, revealing a "voracious musical vocabulary".

In 2003, Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list included Bridge over Troubled Water at number 51, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme at number 201,Bookends at number 233, and Greatest Hits at number 293. And in 2004, on their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list, Rolling Stone included "Bridge Over Troubled Water" at number 47, "The Boxer" at number 105, and "The Sound of Silence" at number 156.