Bridge over Troubled Water (song)

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"Bridge over Troubled Water"
Song

"Bridge over Troubled Water" is the title song of Simon and Garfunkel's final album together, Bridge over Troubled Water. It reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on February 28 1970, and stayed at the top of the chart for six weeks. It was replaced at the number-one spot by The Beatles' "Let It Be".

This song's recording process exposed many of the underlying tensions that eventually led to the breakup of the group after the album's completion. Most notably, Paul Simon has repeatedly expressed regret that he allowed Art Garfunkel to sing this song as a solo, as it focused attention on Garfunkel and relegated Simon to a backing position. Garfunkel said that the moment when he performed it in Madison Square Garden in 1972 was "almost biblical". In recent performances on the "Old Friends" tour, Simon and Garfunkel have taken turns singing alternate verses of the vocal.

As the song ends, sounds of a thunderstorm are heard. The last note, on a violin, is a long, drawn out B-flat.

Writing and recording

Simon wrote the song in the summer of 1969 while Garfunkel was filming Catch 22 in Mexico. It was written on the guitar in the key of G, though an early demo version Paul Simon detuned the song on his guitar to an F.

The song originally had two verses and different lyrics. He specifically wrote it for Art and knew it was going to be a piano song. He based the lyrics on a line "I'll be your bridge over deep water if you trust in me" by Swan Silvertones. It has elements of a Bach chorale as well.

Art reportedly thought Paul should sing it as he liked Paul's falsetto on the demo. Once in the studio Roy Halee, their producer, and Art thought the song needed three verses and needed to be 'bigger' sounding. Paul agreed and spent two hours writing a third verse which he always maintained you could tell was added on later.

Larry Knechtel spent four days working on the piano arrangement. Art came up with the intermediate piano chords between the verses while working with Knechtel.

Awards

It won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and Song of the Year in the Grammy Awards of 1971, with its album also winning several awards in the same year. A gospel-inspired cover version by Aretha Franklin, taken from her album Aretha Live at Fillmore West, later won the Grammy Award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance in the 1972 awards. In 1999, BMI named it as the 19th-most performed song of the 20th century. Rolling Stone named it number 47 on The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In 2006, it was awarded 4th place in Australian TV show 20 to 1's Greatest Songs of All Time, beaten by "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" by The Rolling Stones, "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin and "Imagine" by John Lennon

Releases, covers and various versions

"Bridge over Troubled Water" has been released by a number of artists since its original production in 1970:

Covered by:

Preceded by Billboard Hot 100 number-one single (Simon and Garfunkel version)
February 28 1970 		Succeeded by
Preceded by UK Singles Chart number-one single (Simon and Garfunkel version)
March 24 1970 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Canadian number-one single (Clay Aiken version)
June 28 2003 (13 weeks) 		Succeeded by

Greenwood College Ensamble

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