Joan Baez - Dangling Conversation (Lyrics) [HD]

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Joan Baez sings the Simon & Garfunkel song 'Dangling Conversation' from her 1967 Vanguard album 'Joan'. The lyrics are in the video and listed below with comments on the song.

Note: Though singers often make lyric changes to songs they cover - usually relatively minor, Paul Simon did not like Baez' change of his line "Is the theater really dead?" to "Is the church really dead?".

[Vinyl/Lyrics/20-Images/WAV]

Dangling Conversation (Singer-Joan Baez)

It's a still-life watercolor
Of the now late afternoon
And the sun shines through the curtained lace
And shadows wash the room

And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference
Like shells upon the shore
We can hear the ocean roar

In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
That are the borders of our lives

And you read your Emily Dickinson
And I my Robert Frost
And we note our place with book markers
To measure what we've lost

Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm
Couplets out of rhyme
In syncopated time

Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
That are the borders of our lives

And we speak of things that matter
In words that must be said
Can analysis be worthwhile?
Is the church really dead?

How the room is softly fading
I can only kiss your shadow
I cannot feel your hand
You're a stranger now unto me

Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
That are the borders of our lives

Songwriter: Paul Simon

Wikipedia states:

"The Dangling Conversation" is a song by American music duo Simon & Garfunkel, released in September 1966 as the second single from the duo's third studio album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966). The song peaked at number 25 on the Billboard Hot 100. The theme is failed communication between lovers. The song starts in a room washed by shadows from the sun slanting through the lace curtains and ends with the room "softly faded." The two are as different as the poets they read: Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. Simon has compared this song to "The Sound of Silence", but says "The Dangling Conversation" is more personal.

Simon & Garfunkel's opinion of the song varied over time. According to biographer Peter Ames Carlin, they both considered it their favorite song on the album at the time of its release. Marc Eliot, who wrote Paul Simon: A Life, disputes this, arguing that Garfunkel always disliked the song and felt it was pretentious. When the single did not perform as well as they had hoped, Simon told Record Mirror's Norman Jopling that the song was "above the kids." In 1993, when asked about the song, he commented, "It's a college kid's song, a little precious."

The song only climbed to 25 on the US charts and never made it onto the UK charts. Simon viewed "The Dangling Conversation" as an "absolutely amazing" disappointment to him at the time, as the previous three Simon & Garfunkel singles were reasonable "hits". He felt as though the song may have been "too heavy" for a mainstream audience.

Joan Baez included a cover of the song on her 1967 Joan album. She changed one of the lines to "Is the church really dead?" and Simon insisted that a line be inserted on the album's back cover that read: "Paul Simon asks Joan to note that the original line is, 'Is the theater really dead?'"(as you can read in the left side under arrangements on the backcover of the Original LP).