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Simon & Elsa

My kids are obsessed with Frozen and its sequel Frozen II. Mina will request “Elsha” the very first thing upon waking up in the morning or returning home from daycare or as soon as she’s finished throwing her unwanted blueberries on the floor at dinner. It is relentless.

So, as you might imagine, the music from the movies is a constant stowaway in my head. And as much as I think “Let It Go” is a banger of a karaoke song and that “Lost In the Woods” is a hilarious Peter Cetera riff, I am not always happy to have the snippets of the other songs I only partially know bouncing around my consciousness.

The particular song that inspired this post is from the second film. It’s called “Show Yourself”. It’s sung by Idina Menzel as Elsha and it’s very, very catchy. Beatrice especially loves this one. We have a bunch of videos of her belting it at the top of her lungs. It’s really quite endearing how strongly it sings to her little soul.

When Menzel sings the line “Show yourself!”, it resolves in a way that, in my mind, connects to Paul Simon’s iconic hit “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”. You know the song. We all know the song. Everyone knows the song. It’s been playing non-stop since its 1972 release.

The mental mash-up, the music portmanteau goes a little like “Show yourself! I don’t know where I’m going, I’m on my way, I’m taking me time but I don’t know where”. Try it. It’ll get stuck in your head, too.

All done?

Good.

As you can imagine, such a potent musical melange wouldn’t stay sequestered in my head. When I am doing chores around the house the music escapes, and that means that Sarah has to endure it, also.

“Oh, god, I hate Simon & Garfunkel!” she said to me.

“I mean, yeah, goodbye to Rosie! Queen of corona!” I said.

“Yuck! I hate that song. There’s only one Simon & Garfunkel song I like.” We started to search through Spotify to find the song she was thinking about, but without success.

Then I had a thought, “Maybe it’s just a Paul Simon song?”

Then we found it. “Yes! This one! I love this song!” she said.

“This song?! This is the song you love??”

And do you want to know what the super hot Paul Simon jam my wife absolutely loves is?

It’s this:

Wow. You think you know someone and then you learn that their favorite Paul Simon song is “You Can Call Me Al”.

2 Comments

  1. Elsha Brainworm Elsha Brainworm January 15, 2025

    Why the hell is Chevy Chase in that Paul Simon video?

    • Joe Dillingham Joe Dillingham Post author | January 15, 2025

      It was the mid-80s! Who the fuck knows???

      Wikipedia says this:

      Simon did not like the original music video for the song, which was a performance of the song Simon gave during the monologue when he hosted Saturday Night Live in the perspective of a video monitor.[12] A replacement video directed by Gary Weis was conceived partly by Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels, in which Saturday Night Live alumnus Chevy Chase lip-synced Simon’s vocals as Simon lip-synced to the backing vocals and brought in various instruments to mime playing when they respectively appear in the song. The height difference between the 6 ft 4 in (193 cm) Chase and the 5 ft 3 in (160 cm) Simon serves as a comical juxtaposition.

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