• Home
  • Movies
  • Music
  • TV
  • Video Games
  • Wrestling
  • Topics
  • Latest Comments
Search
Cult of Whatever logo
  • Movies
    Featured
    • The Living Daylights: Timothy Dalton as James Bond

      The Living Daylights is still awesome, thirty-five years later

      By Matthew Martin
      | March 28, 2022
      Movie Blogs
    Recent
    • Elvis: Austin Butler

      REVIEW: ELVIS beautifully mythologizes the King of Rock and Roll

      By Matthew Martin
      | June 25, 2022
    • The Black Phone: Ethan Hawke as The Grabber

      REVIEW: THE BLACK PHONE is a flat, dull, rushed non-horror movie

      By Matthew Martin
      | June 25, 2022
    • Jurassic World Dominion Logo

      REVIEW: Jurassic World Dominion – Here we go again…again

      By Matthew Martin
      | June 12, 2022
    • Three Men and a Baby: Tom Selleck and Ted Danson

      Three Men and a Baby is still awesome thirty five years later

      By Matthew Martin
      | May 31, 2022
    • The Bob's Burgers Movie Poster

      REVIEW: Bob’s Burgers The Movie is Bob’s Burgers The Show, which means it’s great

      By Matthew Martin
      | May 28, 2022
    • Top Gun Maverick: Tom Cruise

      REVIEW: Top Gun Maverick is a sequel that soars!

      By Matthew Martin
      | May 27, 2022
  • Music
    Random
    • Bg Frank Sinatra Elvis

      Elvis's 40 Year Reign (1960-1962)

      By Matthew Martin
      | May 4, 2017
      Music Blogs
    Recent
    • The Beatles: Get Back

      What GET BACK reveals about the Beatles

      By Matthew Martin
      | December 15, 2021
    • Simon And Garfunkel at Feyenoord Stadium in Rotterdam1982

      The Boxer is a song about being conned

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 4, 2021
    • Lady Gaga: Chromatica Album Cover

      Lady Gaga’s discography is totally out of order

      By Matthew Martin
      | June 3, 2021
    • Michael Jackson Thriller Album Cover

      Thirty years ago music fans said “Nevermind” to Michael Jackson

      By Matthew Martin
      | March 21, 2021
    • Queen II Album Cover

      On Queen’s The Miracle, and the importance of track ordering

      By Matthew Martin
      | February 16, 2021
    • Linda Paul Mccartney 1976

      50 years ago, McCartney dropped “Lennon” and went solo…

      By Matthew Martin
      | June 5, 2020
  • TV
    Featured
    • Nancy Drew S03e01: Kennedy McMann as Nancy

      Nancy Drew S03E01 Review: The Warning of the Frozen Heart - Uh-oh!

      By Salome G
      | October 10, 2021
      TV Blogs
    Recent
    • Roswell, New Mexico S04e03: Sibongile Mlambo, Lily Cowles and Michael Trevino as Anatsa, Isobel and Kyle

      Roswell, New Mexico S04E03 Review: Subterranean Homesick Alien – Treading water?

      By Salome G
      | June 23, 2022
    • Obi-Wan Kenobi Series: Ewan McGregor and Vivien Lyra Blair as Obi-Wan and Leia

      REVIEW: Obi-Wan Kenobi had a good season and little else

      By Matthew Martin
      | June 22, 2022
    • Evil S03e02: Sohina Sidhu and Aasif Mandvi as Karima and Ben Shakir

      Evil S03E02 Review: The Demon of Memes – Delightfully creepy

      By Salome G
      | June 20, 2022
    • Dark Winds S01e02: Jessica Matten as Bernadette Manuelito

      Dark Winds S01E02 Review: The Male Rain Approaches – Loose threads

      By Salome G
      | June 20, 2022
    • Riverdale S06e17: Madelaine Petsch, Camila Mendes and Lili Reinhart as Cheryl, Veronica and Betty

      Riverdale S06E17 Review: American Psychos – Bored

      By Salome G
      | June 18, 2022
    • Star Trek Strange New Worlds S01e06: Ian Ho and Husein Madhavji as First Servant and Elder Gamal

      Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – Episodes 6-7 review (the best and the not-so best)

      By Matthew Martin
      | June 18, 2022
  • Video Games
    Featured
    • Arkham Knight

      Batman: Arkham Knight - A fitting end to a trilogy

      By Tom Farr
      | July 18, 2015
      Video Game Reviews
    Recent
    • Legend Of Zelda

      Can a Legend of Zelda movie work?

      By Matthew Martin
      | April 6, 2022
    • Super Mario 64

      Which system had the better launch: A battle of four Nintendo consoles

      By Matthew Martin
      | December 1, 2021
    • Luigi's Mansion

      Happy twentieth to Nintendo’s underrated gem, the Gamecube

      By Matthew Martin
      | November 18, 2021
    • Metroid Dread

      Metroid Dread – Post Game analysis and sequel needs

      By Matthew Martin
      | October 29, 2021
    • Mario Headphones

      The SNES Turns 30: A look at some of the system’s best soundtracks

      By Matthew Martin
      | October 22, 2021
    • Metroid Dread Poster

      REVIEW: Metroid Dread reawakens the old gamer in me

      By Matthew Martin
      | October 11, 2021
  • Wrestling
    Featured
    • Wwe Payback 2017 Poster 2

      Your SO OF COURSE preview of WWE Payback 2017

      By Matthew Martin
      | April 30, 2017
      WWE Blogs
    Recent
    • AEW Double or Nothing 2022: CM Punk vs Adam Page

      REVIEW: AEW Double or Nothing 2022 delivered an up-and-down show

      By Matthew Martin
      | May 30, 2022
    • MJF on AEW Dynamite 17th November 2021

      Getting AEW to the next level…

      By Matthew Martin
      | May 29, 2022
    • Raw 210501: Triple H and Stephanie McMahon

      May 21, 2001 – A (forgotten) date that will live in WWE infamy

      By Matthew Martin
      | May 20, 2022
    • WWE WrestleMania 39 Logo

      Your WAY TOO EARLY predictions for WWE WrestleMania 39!

      By Matthew Martin
      | April 20, 2022
    • WWE WrestleMania 38 Poster

      Your SO OF COURSE preview of WWE WRESTLEMANIA 38!

      By Matthew Martin
      | March 30, 2022
    • Wrestlemania 31 Paige Aj Lee 2

      BOOK REVIEW: The Women of WrestleMania is a balanced take on an under-valued slice of history

      By Matthew Martin
      | March 16, 2022
  • Topics
    • site logo
    Latest
    • REVIEW: ELVIS beautifully mythologizes the King of Rock and Roll
    • REVIEW: THE BLACK PHONE is a flat, dull, rushed non-horror movie
    • Roswell, New Mexico S04E03 Review: Subterranean Homesick Alien - Treading water?
    • REVIEW: Obi-Wan Kenobi had a good season and little else
    • Evil S03E02 Review: The Demon of Memes - Delightfully creepy
    • Dark Winds S01E02 Review: The Male Rain Approaches - Loose threads
    • Latest Comments

    The Boxer is a song about being conned

    By Matthew Martin
    | July 4, 2021
    Music Blogs

    Simon and Garfunkel were poets first, musicians second.

    Their music spoke to and for a generation, which is the kind of thing not often said today, in an era of carefully produced, cultivated, and curated “big brand” record companies. In an era where radio stations in Peoria play the music that’s prescribed by a bunch of suits in New York, it’s hard for someone or some group of someones to break through with something new, radical, or era-defining. Don’t misunderstand, there are still artists who can rightly claim the label “voice of a generation.” Kanye has a pretty good argument for the present day (and he’ll make those arguments in interviews, too). That being said, it’s a rare thing to find someone that people largely agree is the voice of their generation. The amazing thing about music in the 1960s is that the decade produced multiple artists who could claim the title and fans of the decade’s music would agree with all of them. The Beatles? They certainly fit the bill. They represent the top of the popular music trends of the decade. Jimi Hendrix? Sure. He was music’s counter-culture philosophy, personified. Bob Dylan? Absolutely. He was the decade’s prophet on the street corner, decrying society’s woes and waxing philosophic about the events of the day.

    Simon and Garfunkel? They were the poet laureates of the 1960s.

    Simon And Garfunkel at Feyenoord Stadium in Rotterdam1982

    While there are a lot of musicians that were equally excellent songwriters, there are few whose lyrics were good enough to be read and contemplated on their own, without any accompaniment. Even with The Beatles—who had some marvelously written tracks (For No One is a masterpiece poem about a broken relationship)—most of their songs started out first with music and then the words were added in later to fit around the tune. The most covered song in their arsenal, Yesterday, started as a pretty little melody that Paul played on his guitar before the lyrics were ever plugged in beside the music. Knowing that almost diminishes the lyrics.

    Not so with Simon and Garfunkel, whose lyrics stand on their own as excellent works of poetry and prose. The fact that they chose to present their written works through beautiful harmony and musical arrangements, both stripped down and sweeping, is a testament to their all-around talent. Make no mistake, though, to read a Simon and Garfunkel song is just as thought-provoking as it is to listen to one, and The Boxer is perhaps their most underrated composition.

    Granted, The Boxer is rightly regarded as one of the duo’s best songs. It’s beyond famous, instantly recognizable in its opening notes, and has a chorus everyone loves to sing along with. The lyrics are the hidden gem, however, as they are often dismissed as a little nonsense story that doesn’t mean much and only serves to get us to the fun “ly la-ly” chorus. However, if you take a closer look at the song, you might just realize how deceptive those lyrics are, and I use the word “deceptive,” quite intentionally.

    The Boxer is a song about being conned.

    Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

    YouTube privacy policy

    If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.

    Songwriters: Edmund John Simons / Thomas Owen Mostyn Rowlands / Timothy Allan Burgess
    The Boxer lyrics © Paul Simon Music, Warner/Chappell Music Ltd

    Specifically, The Boxer is a song about you, the listener, being conned by the singer. Here are the lyrics…

    Right off the bat (verses 1 and 2), we’re taken into the world of the song through the personal pronoun, the very first word in the song: “I.” You’re listening to someone tell the story, and it’s not Paul Simon or Art Garfunkel. They are merely taking on the role of the one singing, and the one singing is a beggar on the street, panhandling for money. To lure you in and hopefully draw some money from your pocket, he tells you the sad story of his life.

    The beggar grew up poor, with a life story that he seldom tells, about leaving home as a boy, and finding his way to the poorer quarters of New York City, where the ragged people go. He had aspirations and dreams, lofty goals as all young men do when they set out from home. He could have settled down to a mundane life, but he resisted. He wanted to be a champion boxer, you see. He would fight in the alleys, fight in the local leagues, and planned to climb the ladder to challenge the guys at the top. That was his dream, and with every headwind, every obstacle, every taste of defeat, he persisted and resisted the urge to give up.

    Now, after a failure to make anything of himself, the beggar has squandered that resistance, trading in the last of it for “a pocketful of mumbles,” which is what he’s doing now: He’s mumbling his story, hoping the listener—that’s you—will take pity on him and maybe give him a little bit of money so he can eat.

    The chorus interrupts the beggar’s story, explicitly telling you not to trust this man. His words are lies, don’t believe him. But you don’t listen. A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. You want to believe his sad story, so he continues to verses 3 and 4.

    He’s trying to work, trying to live, but he has no offers. He eats when he can, sleeps where he can, tries and struggles to get by, but–

    “It’s a lie,” the chorus quietly interrupts, faintly at first, but then a soft instrumental plays, swaying you, lulling you, drawing you in, before the chorus cuts in more forcefully with the slam of a drum: “Lie! Don’t believe him. Don’t fall for it.”

    Verse 5 is the beggar’s big finish. He wants to go home, he says. He wishes he was gone already, as the New York City winters chill, crack, and draw blood from his unsheltered skin. You can see it on his face; clearly, he’s been bleeding. It draws pity from you. He wants to go home, and he just needs a little bit of ($$$) help to do it…

    And you buy it…quite literally.

    You give the beggar what you can; you hand him the money and walk away satisfied that you helped. But whom did you help, really? What did the beggar want, really? Did he really want to go home? No. But before you think he was just going to spend his newly acquired money on booze or women or some other frivolous thing, the song’s perspective shifts from the first person to the third and the musical arrangement becomes more lively (signaling the shift in perspective).

    The final verse is a coda, telling us what became of the beggar.

    The beggar is a boxer and a fighter by his trade. His dream is not dead; his resistance is not squandered. He continues to fight, no matter how many times he loses (he carries the reminders of every glove that laid him down). Like any boxer that’s been hit too many times, his words are mere mumbles, but he does not quit. He gets laid down and cut open (you saw the wounds on his face before you gave him your money). He loses over and over until he cries out, angry at his loss and ashamed of his failures: “I am leaving!”

    But he can’t leave. He can’t let go of his dream. The fighter still remains. He’s still fighting when he can in dingy, dirty, smoke-filled gyms, betting on himself and losing every time. And every time he loses he cries out all over again “I am leaving, I am leaving!”

    The chorus returns one last time, but now the shouts of “lie, lie, lie” have become a taunt, teasing the fighter who says he will quit, who says he will leave, who says his every defeat is his last…when the reality is he can’t quit. The words are lies. He returns to the streets, to beg for money.

    To us he is “the beggar,” but in his mind, he is “the boxer,” focused only on collecting enough money to survive so he can continue dreaming, and to con whoever will listen to his story out of whatever he can get, just to keep that dream alive.

    Even if the dream is, itself, a lie.

    Share this article:

    Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit

    Tags

    Simon and Garfunkel

    COMMENTS

    Please read our Commenting Policy before you join in with the discussion.

    Note: If you have email notifications enabled, please check your email spam folders to ensure emails are not missed.

    Subscribe
    Connect withD
    I allow to create an account
    When you login first time using a Social Login button, we collect your account public profile information shared by Social Login provider, based on your privacy settings. We also get your email address to automatically create an account for you in our website. Once your account is created, you'll be logged-in to this account.
    DisagreeAgree
    Notify of
    guest
    Connect withD
    I allow to create an account
    When you login first time using a Social Login button, we collect your account public profile information shared by Social Login provider, based on your privacy settings. We also get your email address to automatically create an account for you in our website. Once your account is created, you'll be logged-in to this account.
    DisagreeAgree
    guest
    0 Comments
    Inline Feedbacks
    View all comments

    You might also like

    • PET SOUNDS by the Beach Boys is a symphony of harmony and joy

      By Matthew Martin
      | August 2, 2016
    • John Lennon’s final recordings are so full of joy it breaks your heart…

      By Matthew Martin
      | October 17, 2016
    • “Thieves” is a broken-hearted song about people who steal our hearts

      By Matthew Martin
      | September 27, 2016

    FIND THE TOPICS YOU WANT...

    Music Topics

    Recommended for you

    • What GET BACK reveals about the Beatles

      By Matthew Martin
      | December 15, 2021
    • The Boxer is a song about being conned

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 4, 2021
    • Lady Gaga’s discography is totally out of order

      By Matthew Martin
      | June 3, 2021
    • Thirty years ago music fans said “Nevermind” to Michael Jackson

      By Matthew Martin
      | March 21, 2021
    • 50 years ago, McCartney dropped “Lennon” and went solo…

      By Matthew Martin
      | June 5, 2020
    • The secret to Weird Al’s genius…

      By Matthew Martin
      | June 25, 2019
    • Fifty years of Led Zeppelin

      By Matthew Martin
      | March 4, 2019
    • QUEEN’s catalogue, from bottom to top

      By Matthew Martin
      | November 1, 2018
    • Elvis’s 40 Year Reign (1954-1955)

      By Matthew Martin
      | January 27, 2017
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Affiliate Disclosure
    • Cookie Policy and Settings
    • Terms of Use
    • Photo Credits
    • RSS
    All Cult of Whatever articles, logos, illustrations and graphics are copyright CultOfWhatever.com. All other trademarks, logos and copyrights are the property of their respective owners. © 2021 CultOfWhatever. All Rights Reserved.
    • facebook
    • twitter
    wpDiscuz