At 81, Has Paul Simon Found Religion on His New Album, ‘Seven Psalms’?

Paul Simon, 81, says his new record, Seven Psalms, “is really an argument I’m having with myself about belief, or not.” It came to him in a dream, “and the dream said, ‘You're supposed to write a piece called Seven Psalms,’ ” he told Gramophone. “I wasn’t writing anything. ... I had done what I thought was probably going to be my last live performance, at least for a while. And then this dream happened, and I thought, I’m not sure I even know what a psalm is.”

Simon’s seven-part, 33-minute composition is his prayer for answers, ending with “Amen.” His voice and acoustic guitar are front and center against an evocative, otherworldly soundscape created entirely by acoustic instruments: gongs, Swiss tuned bells, harmonium, glockenspiel. His wife, Edie Brickell, 57, and British vocal ensemble Voces8 provide additional vocals.

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The result is moving and meditative, subdued yet complex.

​Simon recounts God’s omnipresence in the opener “The Lord,” whose blissful delicacy intensifies at a dark turn: “The Covid virus is the Lord / The Lord is the ocean rising / The Lord is a terrible swift sword.” In “Your Forgiveness” he contemplates life after death: “I, I have my reasons to doubt / A white light eases the pain / Two billion heartbeats and out / Or does it all begin again?”

“The Sacred Harp” starts with a vignette about picking up hitchhikers, then hairpins into the Book of Samuel verse about David playing the harp to ease King Saul’s torment: “The sacred harp that David played to make his songs of praise / We long to hear those strings that set his heart ablaze."​

What’s the wellspring of this dream-fueled search for meaning at the age of 81?

The spiritual journey of Paul Simon​

The album cover for "Seven Psalms."

Sony Music Entertainment

Seven Psalms marks a peak in Simon’s long-percolating spirituality. His music is liberally seeded with allusions to spirituality in general — but there are so many specifically Christian references that a puzzled Paul McCartney once asked him, “Aren’t you Jewish?”

Born to Hungarian Jewish immigrants, Simon was bar mitzvahed, but his work has expressed a quest not defined by devoutness. In his 1983 song “Hearts and Bones,” he refers to himself and former wife Carrie Fisher (whose dad was Jewish) as “One and one-half wandering Jews / Free to wander wherever they choose … / In the Sangre de Cristo / The Blood of Christ Mountains / Of New Mexico.”

Over the years Simon spent hours talking religion, with the Dalai Lama and with British evangelical theologian John Stott. His 2011 album, So Beautiful or So What, with its hit tune “The Afterlife,” won a rave review in Christianity Today. “It’s funny, because for somebody who’s not a religious person, God comes up a lot in my songs,” Simon said then.