This Album Changed My Life: Simon & Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970)

This is the very first full album I fell in love with. I was 13 or 14 years old, and it was the soundtrack to the car journeys of our summer holidays in France.

I loved the exuberant, happy-go-lucky hand-clap rhythms, the tight third harmonies and bright vocal counterparts of Baby Driver. Cecilia, combined with the sunbeamed setting of the French vineyards, mountains and cornfields, brought me to the happiest of places. This is the place I find myself in when creating my own songs. An exact copy of this feeling – inspired and yearning for more.

Belting out the line “Gee, it’s great to be back home, home is where I wanna beeee / I’ve been on the road so long my friend” with my mother, father and brother in the car that summer is one of my favourite memories.

When I became an adult, the album took on a new lease of life and meaning. The message of solidarity and reassurance in Bridge over Troubled Water reverberates in my chest as I remember the emotions and poignancy I felt as a child listening to it, not having the capacity to understand how it made me feel at the time. Learning it was their last collaboration as creative partners makes it a beautiful ending.

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It affected, maybe introduced the creative energy and the visual world that music gifts me, an energy that I hope I can return back into the world. This album will always fill my chest.

Æ MAK perform at the Little Big Tent at Electric Picnic today at 3.15pm