The Boxer – Simon and Garfunkel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3LFML_pxlY)
The Boxer- Mumford and Sons (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAl-vZsswb4)
“The Boxer” by Simon and Garfunkel was recorded and released in 1969. This ballad about a young poor man’s journey in a new city trying to build a life for himself has a melancholy tone to it. The softness of the singers’ voices underscores that the song is meant to be a sad one. The most energy that comes from the song is when they are repeating the chorus “lie la lie.” In 2012, Mumford & Sons released a cover of “The Boxer.” The two bands share the same genre so the folk elements of the original song were still echoed in the cover version through the instruments used. However, this band adds more voices and therefore more energy to the chill original. They remove the fourth verse which talks about growing older. This could be to place more emphasis on the last verse which talks about the making of a boxer and the fighter within the young boy. Mumford & Son’s version seems to add more energy to the idea of the man as a fighter by increasing their volume when they sing about it and adding more instruments to accompany their voices. Simon & Garfunkel’s original seems to put more emphasis on his journey as a whole being a sad one rather than on a specific piece of the journey as the cover does. They do this by keeping the volume of their voices relatively the same the whole time, and there does not seem to be a build up from the instruments that there is in the cover. It is interesting that the same song telling the same story can have two different takeaways. Adriana Cavarero talks about the importance of the uniqueness of the voice. She says “The voice, however, is always different from all other voices, even if the words are the same.” The two songs are an example of that idea because while the words are the same the way they choose to use their voices emphasize different words, creating a different narrative.
