Америка: Песня Саймона и Гарфанкела о поисках мечты

1968 song written and composed by Paul Simon

"America" is a song performed by American music duo Simon & Garfunkel, which they included on their fourth studio album, Bookends, in 1968. It was produced by the duo and Roy Halee. The song was later issued as the B side of the single "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her (live version)" in 1972 to promote the release of the compilation album Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits. After peaking in the charts in July 1972, the song was switched to the A side of the single and re entered the charts in November 1972. The song was written and composed by Paul Simon, and concerns young lovers hitchhiking their way across the United States, in search of "America", in both a literal and figurative sense. It was inspired by a 1964 road trip that Simon took with his then girlfriend Kathy Chitty. The song has been regarded as one of Simon's strongest songwriting efforts and one of the duo's best songs. A 2014 Rolling Stone reader's poll ranked it the group's fourth best song.

"America" is a song that "creates a cinematic vista that tells of the singer's search for a literal and physical America that seems to have disappeared, along with the country's beauty and ideals." Art Garfunkel once described the song as "young lovers with their adventure and optimism". The song has been described as a "folk song with a lilting soprano saxophone in its refrain as a small pipe organ paints acoustic guitars, framed by the ghostly traces of classic American Songbook pop structures." In the final verse, the narrator is able to speak his true emotions to Kathy, now that she is sleeping and cannot hear or answer. "I'm empty and aching and I don't know why" captures the longing and angst of the 1960s in nine simple words. The narrator then stares out the window "counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike". Many other empty, aching, and lost souls are on the highway, each on their own journey alone even if someone is traveling with them. The soaring harmony lines and crashing cymbals create a powerful and poignant end to the song's final verse: "They've all come to look for America." Pete Fornatale interprets this lyric as a "metaphor to remind us all of the lost souls wandering the highways and byways of mid sixties America, struggling to navigate the rapids of despair and hope, optimism and disillusionment."

Stephen Holden, in reviewing Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits in 1972, wrote, "'America'  was Simon's next major step forward. It is three and a half minutes of sheer brilliance, whose unforced narrative, alternating precise detail with sweeping observation evokes the panorama of restless, paved America and simultaneously illuminates a drama of shared loneliness on a bus trip with cosmic implications." Record World called the single version from Greatest Hits "a more commercial, elaborate production than appeared on the Bookends album." Thom Jurek of Allmusic described the song's central question as an "ellipsis, a cipher, an unanswerable question", a song in which "sophisticated harmonic invention is toppled by its message". David Nichols, in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, called the song "a splendid vignette of a road trip by young lovers; both intimate and epic in scale, it traces an inner journey from naive optimism to more mature understanding." American Songwriter deemed the song "essentially a road trip song, but like all road trips, it tends to reveal as much about the participants as it does about the lands being traversed."

The song enjoyed a resurgence in popularity – and was introduced to a new generation – after being featured in Cameron Crowe's critically acclaimed film Almost Famous in 2000. An early scene in the film, set in 1968, finds the free spirited character "Anita" (Zooey Deschanel) playing the song for her mother (Frances McDormand) to " explain why [she] is leaving home to become a stewardess". The financial services company American Express also used the song in a series of popular television advertisements in the late 2010s. In 2010, lyrics from the song began appearing spray painted on vacant buildings and abandoned factories in the town of Saginaw, Michigan, which is mentioned in the song. The song's entire lyrics are painted on 28 buildings in the city, including railroad tracks and bridge supports. The campaign sought permission to use it from Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel themselves, who both agreed. Garfunkel stated that he was a supporter of Sanders and his campaign, and that the usage of "America" did not take away from the song's original premise. The song appears in a 2017 TV commercial for the Volkswagen Atlas.

The earliest known performances of "America" came from the band Clouds. In their earlier incarnation as 1 2 3, they had performed a re written version of the song that included elements similar to those later used by Yes; changes in time signature, classical interludes, newly written segments, etc. A live tape exists of this being performed at the Marquee in April 1967, prior to the release of any known recording by any artist, including Paul Simon, himself. Simon had recorded demos at Levy studios in London in 1965, and tapes of these were passed to the band by a studio engineer (Stu Francis of Radio Luxembourg). In 1966, 1 2 3 also performed "Sounds of Silence" from this same tape.

Folk singer Bert Sommer, a member of the group the Left Banke, covered the song in the late 1960s, and he also performed the song at Woodstock in 1969.

David Bowie performed a minimalist version of the song to open The Concert for New York City in October 2001. Bowie performed seated on the floor, center stage, with a microphone and a Suzuki Omnichord.2001.

American singer songwriter Josh Groban recorded it on his live album Live at the Greek (2003), and has performed the song live on multiple occasions, including a Howard Gilman Opera House for Brooklyn Academy of Music's celebration of Simon's music in 2008, and at the A Capitol Fourth concert in 2011. "Paul Simon is one of my favorite artists and 'America' has always been a song I've loved," he once remarked. Lucy Wainwright Roche performs it, together with The Roches, on her 2010 album Lucy. The band America also released a recording of the song on their 2011 album Back Pages. The Swedish sister duo First Aid Kit performed the song in honor of Paul Simon at the 2012 Polar Music Prize award ceremony, which earned them a standing ovation from Paul Simon himself. On Black Friday of 2014, First Aid Kit released a 10" single containing the song as the title track. They performed a live version on the Marc Riley show for BBC Radio 6 Music on September 4, 2012. Renaissance recorded a version of it in 1981, wherein Annie Haslam sings as the male narrator without any lyrical adjustments. It remained unreleased until appearing on the 1997 compilation Songs from Renaissance Days. Sting performs the song on a quarter size acoustic guitar live on stage on the Paul Simon with Sting tour. U2 has snippeted the song on multiple occasions during their 2015 and 2017 world tours.