CSPC: Simon & Garfunkel Popularity Analysis

How big were Simon & Garfunkel? The Beatles are often compared to the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys and the Monkees for different reasons. The former because they are the leading symbols of the British invasion. The second due to them being their main challengers artistically speaking. Then the latter since they were created as an American answer to them which in all fairness was insanely massive in 1967. In terms of global success and sales though, the closest to the fab four from 1966 to 1970 was none of them but instead the aforementioned duo Simon & Garfunkel.

The duo made of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, who was first promoted as Tom & Jerry struggled during several years before exploding to the general public. It did so in two steps, first thanks to a re-issue of The Sound of Silence which cross over the main audience, hitting #1 in the US. Second, thanks to the movie The Graduate and its #1 Soundtrack made of songs from them.

This progressive raise in fame resulted in one of the weirdest discographies you will ever find. The first album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M flopped at first, so when its song The Sound of Silence became big a pair of years later, a new album contained the same single although in a new version, Sounds Of Silence, was issued to benefit from this hype. Then The Graduate as a Soundtrack included Sounds Of Silence too but also Mrs Robinson, the big hit which was supporting their 4th album Bookends at the same time.

Since they all included the same singles, their records cannibalized each other from day 1. It makes their success much harder to read. Luckily, thanks to our approach we are able to re-assign the success of all records into their original creators, providing at last a clear view of the duo’s popularity.

As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to relevantly gauge their results. This concept will not only bring you sales information for all Simon & Garfunkel‘s albums, physical and download singles, as well as audio and video streaming, but it will also determine their true popularity. If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC method, the next page explains it with a short video. I fully recommend watching the video before getting into the sales figures. Of course, if you are a regular visitor feel free to skip the video and get into the figures.