Facebook saw fit to show me this post today, which I thought was strange. I've barely said anything on Facebook about my all-consuming obsession with Simon the chipmunk, and even less about my great fondness for Simon and Garfunkel, so perhaps the algorithms just think I'm into "Weird Hollywood"...
Much as I appreciate "Joe" for drawing this, I'm not sure it's as clever or original as he seems to believe it is. But even so, I think it's great to see what would probably make a rather nice duet. Simon has the deepest voice of the three Chipmunks, and he might mesh very well with Garfunkel's high harmonies. I want to hear it now.
The single panel cartoon resonates with a lot of the history of Simon and Art, in fact, so here are a few things you might not know if your only reaction to seeing it is 'Oh, yes, Simon and Garfunkel, I get it.'
Art Garfunkel has previous experience of singing to cartoon animals. Back in 1998, he narrates in song the really excellent episode of Arthur, "The Ballad of Buster Baxter". Buster returns to the series at the start of season 3, having spent the previous year travelling the world with his father and starring in a spinoff show, Postcards from Buster. This episode chronicles Buster struggling to fit back in with his friends, and for some reason Art Garfunkel the moose is hanging around and singing about Buster's feelings. In the picture above, Buster complains that the verse about him being sad is played to much too cheerful music, and so Art complies by making it more melancholy. The whole thing really does work, believe me!
"Why would they come to our concert just to boo us?"
I'd also like to see this great performance with Lisa Simpson, of course ("Lisa's Rival", 1994, although more of my readers here are likely to know this one already...). Which leads us nicely into the subject of Simon, since being consistently overshadowed by Alvin is very much part of his character!
Although (as everyone should know) Simon isn't in the habit of wearing a shirt with a big S on the front, that has only been the exclusive preserve of Alvin since 1961. Before that, all three chipmunks were invariably depicted with their first letter, which certainly made it easier to tell which was which before they had any kind of settled character model. Perhaps in his duet with Garfunkel, Simon is just harking back to the days of "The Chipmunk Song", 1958?
In this really quite awesome interview from 2019, Simon says he'd like to duet with Florence + the Machine. You've got to admire his taste. In the same interview, Simon says he'd like to have a mohawk, which I agree would look great, but I must say I can't really picture how well his voice would work paired with Florence. Everybody squeak? I'd still really like to hear it, though!
