Song of the Day 10/26: Paul Simon, “René and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War”

Plenty of songs were inspired by photographs — I might steal an idea from El Somnambulo and do a theme week of them — but this one is special. It pairs one of Paul Simon’s sweetly melancholy jazz-flavored melodies with lyrics that echo the surrealism of Rene Magritte’s paintings. It sprang from a photograph of the Belgian painter and his wife taken by German photographer Lothar Wolleh, who was most famous for his pictures of more than 100 artists who were his contemporaries. Magritte died shortly after it was taken in 1967. It’s the second photo in this video, which is composed mostly of Magritte’s paintings.

The year after the album was released, artist Joan Logue created what was for the time a cutting-edge video that merged film of the couple with images that recall Magritte’s motifs. On the final verse she incorporates publicity photos of the doo-wop groups that “brought tears to their immigrant eyes” — the Penguins, the Moonglows, the Orioles and the Five Satins.

If you want an acoustic version, here’s Simon’s original demo.

Though it was never released as a single and appeared on one of his weakest-selling albums, 1983’s “Hearts and Bones,” Simon has included it on various compilation and greatest hits LPs. For his farewell tour, Simon arranged the song for the New York chamber sextet yMusic. In this performance in Copenhagen the interplay of the trumpet and bass clarinet and the quaver in Simon’s voice lend the song an even more melancholy air.