In the early 1980s, Simon's relationship with his former musical partner Art Garfunkel had deteriorated, his marriage to the actress Carrie Fisher had collapsed, and his previous record, Hearts and Bones (1983), had been a commercial failure. In 1984, after a period of depression, Simon became fascinated by a bootleg cassette of mbaqanga, South African street music. He and Halee spent two weeks in Johannesburg recording with South African musicians. Further recordings were held in the US with American musicians, including Linda Ronstadt, the Everly Brothers, Rockin' Dopsie and the Twisters, and Los Lobos. Simon toured with South African musicians, performing their music and songs from Graceland.
Graceland became Simon's most successful album and his highest-charting album in over a decade, with estimated sales of more than 16 million copies worldwide. It won the 1987 Grammy for Album of the Year and is frequently cited as one of the best albums in history.
Following a series of hit records released in the 1970s, Simon's career declined. His relationship with his former musical partner Art Garfunkel had again deteriorated; his sixth solo studio album, Hearts and Bones, achieved the lowest sales of his career; and his marriage to the actress Carrie Fisher collapsed. He recalled: "I had a personal blow, a career setback, and the combination of the two put me into a tailspin".
In 1984, Simon agreed to produce an album by the Norwegian multi-instrumentalist Heidi Berg, who had played in the house band for Saturday Night Live and been the bandleader for the short-lived TV series The New Show. Berg was drawn to the cheerful accordion sound in mbaqanga, the Black African street music from Johannesburg's Soweto township, and wanted to fuse Western and African music. Without hearing the music, Simon advised Berg to travel to South Africa and contact local musicians. Berg had been inspired by a bootleg cassette mixtape of obscure South African songs, and lent the cassette to Simon. Berg stipulated that Simon return the tape in a week, as it was a continual source of ideas for her, but Simon kept it. He first listened to it on a drive to Montauk, New York, where he was having a summer home built. He called the tape "very good summer music, happy music" that reminded him of 1950s rhythm and blues. He began improvising melodies over it as he listened in his car, and decided to use it to make his own album.
Simon asked his contacts at his label, Warner, to identify the artists on the tape. Through the South African record producer Hilton Rosenthal, Warner confirmed that the music was South African and played by the Boyoyo Boys. Simon considered buying the rights to his favorite song on the tape, "Gumboots", and using it to write his own song, as he had with the song "El Condor Pasa" in the 1960s. Instead, Rosenthal suggested that Simon record an album of South African music.
In the 1980s, recording in South Africa was dangerous, and the United Nations had imposed a cultural boycott for its policy of apartheid, or forced racial segregation. The boycott forced states to "prevent all cultural, academic, sporting and other exchanges" with South Africa, and ordered writers, artists, musicians and "other personalities" to boycott it. Simon later told The New York Times: "I knew I would be criticized if I went, even though I wasn't going to record for the government ... or to perform for segregated audiences. I was following my musical instincts in wanting to work with people whose music I greatly admired."
In February 1985, Simon and his longtime engineer, Roy Halee, flew to Johannesburg, intending their visit to be secret. The Warner executives were uninterested in the project, viewing Simon as a bad investment due to the failure of his previous two solo albums. Simon felt their indifference worked in his favor, as it gave him more freedom. Halee believed the executives viewed him and Simon as "crazy".
Recording sessions took place at Ovation Studios. Halee worried the studio would be a "horror show" but was surprised to find it "very comfortable". He likened it to a garage, which Halee feared would be a problem for recording, and none of the musicians wore headphones. Jam sessions ranged from 10 to 30 minutes, and Simon and Halee intended to assemble an album from the recordings on their return home. Though the playing was technically simple, Simon found it difficult to mimic. Outside the studio, the public was hostile toward Simon, but the Musician's Union received him warmly.
Though Simon described the recording sessions as "euphoric", he recalled "tension below the surface" due to the effects of apartheid. The musicians would become anxious when recording continued into the evening, since they were prohibited from using public transportation or being on the streets after curfew. Simon recalled, "In the middle of the euphoric feeling in the studio, you would have reminders that you're living in an incredibly tense racial environment, where the law of the land was apartheid."
At the end of the two-week trip, Simon felt a relief from his personal turmoil and a revitalized passion for music.He and Halee returned to the Hit Factory studio in New York City to edit the material. Simon flew several South African musicians to New York to complete the record three months after the Johannesburg sessions. The sessions resulted in "You Can Call Me Al" and "Under African Skies."
Halee edited the album with new digital technology, transferring analog tape recordings to the digital workspace countless times. He said, "The amount of editing that went into that album was unbelievable ... without the facility to edit digital, I don't think we could have done that project."
Graceland incorporates genres including pop, rock, a cappella, zydeco, isicathamiya and mbaqanga. Mbaqanga, or "township jive", originated as the street music of Soweto, South Africa.The album was influenced by the work of the South African musicians Johnny Clegg and Sipho Mchunu, and their band Juluka's Zulu-Western pop crossover music. Juluka was South Africa's first integrated pop band. Simon includes thanks to Clegg, Juluka, and Juluka's producer Hilton Rosenthal in the liner notes. He included American "roots" influences with tracks featuring zydeco musicians such as Rockin' Dopsie and Tex-Mex musicians. Graceland alternates between playful and more serious songs. Simon thought of it as like a play: "As in a play, the mood should keep changing. A serious song may lead into an abstract song, which may be followed by a humorous song."
To write lyrics, Simon listened to the recordings made during his time in Johannesburg, identifying patterns in the music to fit to verses. He said: It was very difficult, because patterns that seemed as though they should fit together often didn't. I realized that in African music, the rhythms are always shifting slightly and that the shape of a melody was often dictated by the bassline rather than the guitar. Harmonically, African music consists essentially of three major chords—that's why it sounds so happy—so I could write almost any melody I wanted in a major scale. I improvised in two ways—by making up melodies in falsetto, and by singing any words that came to mind down in my lower and mid range. A perfectionist, Simon rewrote songs only to scrap the newer versions. Songs such as "Graceland" and "The Boy in the Bubble" took three to four months, while others, such as "All Around the World" and "Crazy Love", came together quickly.
"The Boy in the Bubble" discusses starvation and terrorism, but mixes this with wit and optimism. Simon concurred with this assessment: "Hope and dread—that's right. "Homeless" discusses poverty within the black majority in South Africa. According to Simon's ex-wife Carrie Fisher, the "Graceland" lines "She's come back to tell me she's gone / As if I didn't know that, as if I didn't know my own bed / As if I'd never noticed the way she brushed her hair from her forehead" refer to her.
Graceland was released by Warner Bros. with little promotion in August 1986. Before its release, Simon speculated that he was no longer "a viable commercial force in popular music". By July 1987, Graceland had sold six million copies worldwide. In South Africa, it was the best-selling release since Michael Jackson's Thriller (1982).
