“Mrs Robinson” — Simon and Garfunkel

Have you ever heard something hundreds of times without ever really listening to it? Last week I really listened to “Mrs Robinson” for the first time.

I do most of my music listening in the car whilst driving between client appointments. It’s not the best place, acoustically speaking, for listening to music but it’s “me time” when I can’t do anything else, so I just sit back and listen to my favourite songs.

At least that’s what I thought I did. But I got a new car fairly recently, with a better sound system than my old car, and it turns out I’ve never really listened to “Mrs Robinson” at all.

We’ll get to what I’ve been missing all these years in a moment, but first let’s take a look at one of the most famous songs in the Simon and Garfunkel songbook.

“Mrs Robinson” came from Simon and Garfunkel’s 1968 album “Bookends”, on which “America” and “Hazy Shade Of Winter” also appeared. The use of “Mrs Robinson” in the 1968 film “The Graduate”, starring Anne Bancroft and a very young Dustin Hoffman, cemented its place in cultural history.

Spurred by the movie’s popularity, the song was a great success and reached Number One on the Billboard Hot 100. It didn’t quite do quite as well in the UK, but still made the Top 10 and it’s been a staple of radio airplay ever since.

We all recognise the “dee dee dee” vocals and acoustic guitar playing under the DJ’s patter which signifies that “Mrs Robinson” is the next record up on the…