Song of the Day 5/23: Paul Simon, “Graceland”

For supermarket tabloids, Elvis is the gift that keeps on giving, even though he’s been dead for nearly 50 years. A headline the Weekly World News might have invented declared that Graceland, Presley’s Memphis mansion-turned-tourist attraction, was up for public auction. A finance company claimed Lisa Marie Presley died with an unpaid loan of $3.8 million, and had used Graceland as collateral.

The King’s granddaughter, Riley Keough, moved to block the sale and countersued claiming fraud. A judge stopped the planned auction, the company said it was withdrawing its suit, and now the FBI is taking an interest in the case because the woman who notarized the company’s documents says she’s never seen them before. All the late, lamented Weekly Word News could have added was Batboy.

Graceland opened as a home museum in 1982, just a few years before Paul Simon wrote the title song to his 1986 album. (It was a home museum because until Elvis’ Aunt Delta died in 1993, various relatives still lived there). Though the single only made it to No. 81 on Billboard’s Hot 100 (and No. 38 on whatever the name of the AOR chart was that year), it won the 1988 Grammy Award for Record of the Year.