Before Simon even walked on stage, the setting itself felt almost transcendent. There may not be a more beautiful concert venue in America than The Rady Shell. As daylight slowly surrendered to evening, San Diego Bay transformed before our eyes. Coronado glowed to the left. Downtown sparkled to the right. Sailboats drifted across the harbor. The sky shifted through impossible shades of blue and orange.
It felt like the perfect place to see one of the greatest songwriters who has ever lived. And perhaps that was part of the problem. Expectation.
Nobody arrives at a Paul Simon concert hoping to confront the inevitability of death. Nobody buys a ticket dreaming of existential reflection. We come wanting Graceland. We come wanting rhythm. We come wanting the soundtrack of our youth.
Instead, Simon opened the evening by performing Seven Psalms in its entirety. The 2023 album is a deeply personal meditation on faith, mortality, forgiveness, and what awaits beyond the horizon. It is the work of a man who understands that the road ahead is shorter than the road behind him.
At 84 years old, Simon is no longer interested in pretending otherwise. The songs are thoughtful and often beautiful. They are also undeniably heavy. While audiences undoubtedly respect the work, it felt clear that very few people came to hear an album-length reflection on aging and death.
Yet as the evening unfolded, I began to realize that perhaps Simon wasn't interested in giving the audience what it wanted. He was giving us where he is.
And where he is today is vastly different from where he was when he wrote "Kodachrome," "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," or "You Can Call Me Al."
At 84 years old, Simon is no longer interested in pretending otherwise. The songs are thoughtful and often beautiful. They are also undeniably heavy. While audiences undoubtedly respect the work, it felt clear that very few people came to hear an album-length reflection on aging and death.
Yet as the evening unfolded, I began to realize that perhaps Simon wasn't interested in giving the audience what it wanted. He was giving us where he is.
And where he is today is vastly different from where he was when he wrote "Kodachrome," "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," or "You Can Call Me Al."
The youthful bounce is gone. The mischievous sparkle is quieter. His voice has lost much of the effortless sweetness that once made it one of the most recognizable sounds in popular music.
What remains is something rougher. More fragile. More human. His voice now carries the texture of experience. It sounds lived-in. Worn. Weathered.
What remains is something rougher. More fragile. More human. His voice now carries the texture of experience. It sounds lived-in. Worn. Weathered.
There were moments throughout the evening when I found myself wishing for more energy, more volume, more urgency. The sound mix itself felt surprisingly restrained. Conversations and whispers from nearby audience members occasionally competed with the music. For a venue as spectacular as The Shell, the performance often felt too quiet.
Songs like "Slip Slidin' Away" and "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" seemed to yearn for a little more life than Simon was willing or able to give them.
And the omissions were impossible to ignore. No "Kodachrome." No "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover." No "You Can Call Me Al." For many fans, those absences will likely define their disappointment.
But somewhere around the middle of the show, I realized I was judging the performance against a version of Paul Simon that no longer exists. And perhaps never could.
One of the cruelest things about getting older is that we continue carrying younger versions of people around in our minds and the minds of others long after they have changed. Parents. Friends. Artists. Ourselves. We expect them to remain frozen in time while life continues its relentless work.
Paul Simon isn't the man who stood in Central Park in 1981 before half a million people. He isn't the man who recorded Graceland. He isn't even the man who recorded Seven Psalms. He's an 84-year-old artist standing on a stage, still trying to make sense of existence. And there is something profoundly beautiful about that.
There were moments where the evening transcended nostalgia altogether. "Rewrite" was magnificent. "The Late Great Johnny Ace" felt devastatingly relevant, its meditation on lives interrupted far too soon landing with extraordinary weight. "Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War" was tender and deeply moving.
His longtime wife, Edie Brickell, provided many of the night's brightest moments. Whenever she joined Simon onstage, he seemed to visibly come alive. Their chemistry was effortless, their harmonies warm and intimate. Brickell's voice brought lightness to a performance that otherwise often leaned toward reflection and melancholy.
Then came the realization that completely reframed the night for me. Before the show, my mother told me something I had never known. On September 19, 1981, she and my father attended Simon & Garfunkel's legendary free concert on the Great Lawn in New York's Central Park. She was pregnant with me.
For my entire life, I've felt an unusual connection to Paul Simon's music. His voice has always felt strangely familiar to me. Comforting. Soulful. Like it had somehow always been there. Perhaps it had.
Paul Simon isn't the man who stood in Central Park in 1981 before half a million people. He isn't the man who recorded Graceland. He isn't even the man who recorded Seven Psalms. He's an 84-year-old artist standing on a stage, still trying to make sense of existence. And there is something profoundly beautiful about that.
There were moments where the evening transcended nostalgia altogether. "Rewrite" was magnificent. "The Late Great Johnny Ace" felt devastatingly relevant, its meditation on lives interrupted far too soon landing with extraordinary weight. "Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War" was tender and deeply moving.
His longtime wife, Edie Brickell, provided many of the night's brightest moments. Whenever she joined Simon onstage, he seemed to visibly come alive. Their chemistry was effortless, their harmonies warm and intimate. Brickell's voice brought lightness to a performance that otherwise often leaned toward reflection and melancholy.
Then came the realization that completely reframed the night for me. Before the show, my mother told me something I had never known. On September 19, 1981, she and my father attended Simon & Garfunkel's legendary free concert on the Great Lawn in New York's Central Park. She was pregnant with me.
For my entire life, I've felt an unusual connection to Paul Simon's music. His voice has always felt strangely familiar to me. Comforting. Soulful. Like it had somehow always been there. Perhaps it had.
Somewhere in the darkness Tuesday night, listening to Simon sing songs that have traveled alongside me for my entire existence, I found myself thinking less about the performance and more about time itself. About my parents. About aging. About loss. About how impossible it is to hold onto anything forever.
The encore finally injected some needed energy. "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" briefly lifted the crowd. "The Boxer" was stirring. But it was the final song that ultimately justified the entire evening.
Standing alone, with no band, no spectacle, no distractions, Simon closed with "The Sound of Silence." The song that began this remarkable sixty-year journey when it was released in 1965. Just a man. A voice. A lifetime.
By the end, I had tears in my eyes. Not because the performance was perfect. It wasn't. In many ways, I left disappointed. But disappointment often says more about expectation than reality.
The truth is that Paul Simon gave us exactly what he had to offer. Not the artist we remember. The artist he is today. And maybe that was the point all along.
Aging is not a tragedy. It is a privilege denied to many. The people celebrated in "The Late Great Johnny Ace" never got the chance. Neither did countless others. Paul Simon did.
At 84, he is still standing on stage. Still creating. Still searching. Still asking questions. Still trying to understand what all of this means. And so are we.
As I walked out of The Rady Shell beneath the San Diego skyline, I found myself grateful not for what the concert wasn't, but for what it was. A reminder that life is temporary. That expectations are dangerous. That brilliance evolves.
The encore finally injected some needed energy. "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" briefly lifted the crowd. "The Boxer" was stirring. But it was the final song that ultimately justified the entire evening.
Standing alone, with no band, no spectacle, no distractions, Simon closed with "The Sound of Silence." The song that began this remarkable sixty-year journey when it was released in 1965. Just a man. A voice. A lifetime.
By the end, I had tears in my eyes. Not because the performance was perfect. It wasn't. In many ways, I left disappointed. But disappointment often says more about expectation than reality.
The truth is that Paul Simon gave us exactly what he had to offer. Not the artist we remember. The artist he is today. And maybe that was the point all along.
Aging is not a tragedy. It is a privilege denied to many. The people celebrated in "The Late Great Johnny Ace" never got the chance. Neither did countless others. Paul Simon did.
At 84, he is still standing on stage. Still creating. Still searching. Still asking questions. Still trying to understand what all of this means. And so are we.
As I walked out of The Rady Shell beneath the San Diego skyline, I found myself grateful not for what the concert wasn't, but for what it was. A reminder that life is temporary. That expectations are dangerous. That brilliance evolves.
And that if we're lucky enough to grow old, perhaps the goal isn't to remain who we once were. It's to keep showing up anyway. Even when our voice has changed. Even when our body has slowed. Even when the crowd wants the old version of what once was. Especially then.
Because someday, all of us will be singing our own version of "The Sound of Silence." And if we're fortunate, we'll have had sixty years of music before the final note.
Because someday, all of us will be singing our own version of "The Sound of Silence." And if we're fortunate, we'll have had sixty years of music before the final note.
Originally published on June 10, 2026.
