The Obvious Child
"The Obvious Child" is a song recorded by American singer-songwriter Paul Simon. It was the lead single from his eighth studio album, The Rhythm of the Saints (1990), released by Warner Bros. Records. Written by Simon, its lyrics explore mortality and aging. The song is accompanied by a performance from Brazilian drumming collective Olodum in a live recording. The single, released in September 1990, was commercially successful, performing well on charts worldwide. In the United States, it was mainly successful on the Album Rock Tracks chart, where it peaked at number 21. Outside the US, "The Obvious Child" was a top 15 hit in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The song received highly positive reviews upon its release. Simon promoted the song alongside Olodum in a performance on Saturday Night Live. The song also influenced popular culture; it is the namesake of the 2014 film Obvious Child. Background The rhythm tracks are performed by Grupo Cultural Olodum, a drumming collective ("bloco afro") directed by "Neguinho do Samba" (Alves de Souza) and also signed to Warner Bros. It, like many songs on The Rhythm of the Saints, was recorded live in the streets of Pelourinho Square of Salvador, Brazil in February 1988. Microphones were hung from windows or on telephone poles to capture the performances. According to Simon, "Hundreds of people gathered. It was an amazing day — an amazing recording experience." The vocal track was recorded at the Hit Factory in New York City. Composition The song's drum introduction is indebted to "Madagascar", a song by Olodum from their 1987 LP Egito Madagáscar. Writer Steve Sullivan writes that the figure is a "standard device" for the group, who also employ abbreviated versions of it elsewhere on the album: "Salvador Nao Inerte" and "Vinheta Cuba-Brasil". Following this, the song breaks into an instrumental fragment that, according to Stephen Holden of The New York Times, echoes the Silhouettes' 1957 doo-wop hit, "Get a Job". Holden also compared the song's conclusion to another doo-wop song, The Charts' "Desirie" (1957). The song's lyrics thematically relate to a fear of aging and leaving behind the "boldness of youth," according to Sullivan. Holden considered it a story of an everyman pondering the uncertainty of life whilst navigating his high school yearbook. Rolling Stone John Mcalley too found it an everyman battling the fact that his "days have become defined by their limitations and dogged ordinariness." For The Rhythm of the Saints, Simon was inspired by poet Derek Walcott, and would base first-draft lyrics on his poems. Simon attempted to match the rhythmic quality of the composition with his lyrics, whether that meant a lyric was meaningless or not. A lyric relating to "the cross is in the ballpark," for example, has no meaning; Simon said, "I found [it] to be a satisfying rhythmic phrase against the drums." Chart performance "The Obvious Child" performed well on singles charts in several territories worldwide. In the United States, the song reached a peak of number 92 on the