Paul Simon, image via YouTube

Paul Simon appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night. In his latest spot on the CBS talk show he’s frequented for years, the icon reflected on his early career and his return to the stage and offered a tender treatment of “Something So Right,” a cut from 1973’s There Goes Rhymin’ Simon that he hadn’t performed since an October 1993 show at Madison Square Garden.

Before his slow and stripped-down rendition of the five-decade classic, which builds from just voice and guitar to a full ensemble complete with flute and strings, Simon sat with Colbert for a wide-ranging conversation. Simon noted the imminent European leg of his A Quiet Celebration Tour, then recalled his time living in Europe at the outset of his career, and how he told himself, “My life is irrevocably changed” when he noticed “The Sound of Silence” climbing the charts in Cashbox. He went on to share the hard-earned tricks he picked up from spending so many years busking and, coaxed by Colbert, rattled off some of his picks for the Mount Rushmore of American songwriters: Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell (who earned the Lifetime Achievement Juno in her native Canada earlier this week) and Chuck Berry.

“In the ’50s, Chuck Berry wrote things that were so good, they could have been a part of the Harlem Renaissance,” Simon said. “He taught my whole generation. They’re all influenced by Chuck Berry, Bob [Dylan], The Beatles, and everybody, because he made stories in words that flowed effortlessly.”

Last year, Simon’s A Quiet Celebration Tour brought his triumphant return to the spotlight after seven years away. After concluding his farewell tour in 2018, the legendary singer-songwriter revealed that he’d been afflicted by sudden and severe hearing loss in his left ear, which worsened rapidly during the recording of 2023’s Seven Psalms to the point where he became all but incapable of performing. He overcame the long odds against sharing his music again with advancements in assistive audio technology, including a partnership with the Stanford Initiative to Cure Hearing Loss that created moving monitors that surrounded him in sound on stage; for his Late Show set, he sat next to a specialized speaker.

Watch Simon’s Late Show appearance below, and find tickets and more information on his ongoing tour at paulsimon.com.