Scarborough Fair
Simon & Garfunkel
"Scarborough Fair" is built around an English modal melody that predates the recording by centuries, which gives it the quality of something remembered rather than composed — a song that has always existed, that Simon and Garfunkel are merely the most recent vessels for. The arrangement is deliberately spare: acoustic guitar, hushed vocal harmonies, and in the original album version, a counterpoint melody called "Canticle" that runs against the main line in a different time signature, creating the effect of two songs occupying the same space without quite touching. The herbs — parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme — function as a kind of ritual incantation, the list repeated as both test and longing, an impossible set of conditions that frame the impossibility of the relationship itself. Garfunkel's upper register and Simon's guitar playing are as well-matched as they ever were, the acoustic treatment treating the melody with the respect it deserves while giving it contemporary breath. Music for early mornings, for windows with fog on the glass, for the particular quiet that follows something ending.
slow
1960s
delicate, misty, ancient
United Kingdom
Folk, Folk Rock. English Modal Folk. Wistful, Haunting. Sustains a timeless, suspended longing throughout, with the counterpoint melody creating a sense of two irreconcilable feelings coexisting in the same space. energy 2. slow. danceability 1. valence 3. vocals: hushed harmonies, blended, ethereal, ancient-feeling, pure. production: sparse acoustic guitar, two-melody counterpoint, minimal studio treatment, modal tuning. texture: delicate, misty, ancient. acousticness 9. era: 1960s. United Kingdom. For early foggy mornings or the particular quiet that follows something ending.