Creativity Quote by Paul Simon

Paul Simon’s jab lands because it’s not really about Barry Manilow; it’s about the anxiety of seriousness in pop. “I question what emotion… touches” is a surgeon’s phrasing, cool and diagnostic, as if Manilow’s songs are a product that might be pleasant but nutritionally empty. Simon draws a hard line between being “entertained” and being “emotionally moved,” treating the former as a kind of civic distraction and the latter as the whole point of music worth defending. That distinction carries the classic songwriter’s fear: that the marketplace rewards polish, familiarity, and easy catharsis more reliably than it rewards emotional risk.

The sharpest blade is “I don’t believe anything.” Belief is the currency of singer-songwriters, especially for someone like Simon, whose best work sells complexity through intimacy and specificity. By framing Manilow as unbelievable, he’s accusing him of emotional impersonation: performing feeling rather than transmitting it. The subtext isn’t that Manilow lacks talent; it’s that his talent is optimized for reassurance. Big melodies, clean narratives, and sentiments that arrive pre-approved. Simon is defending a different ethic, where a song should feel like a confession you weren’t meant to overhear, not a greeting card with a key change.

Context matters: post-60s pop still litigated authenticity, and “adult contemporary” became a shorthand for safe mass appeal. Simon’s remark is a border patrol moment, policing the boundary between craft and truth - and revealing how much cultural status still hinges on being moved in the “right” way.