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notes on interpretations

notes on interpretations of the original Paul Simon song

A number of interpretations have been proposed for the original meaning of "Me and Julio". Paul Simon has coyly declined to say. In a July 20, 1972 interview for Rolling Stone, Jon Landau asked: "What is it that the mama saw? The whole world wants to know." Simon replied "I have no idea what it is...Something sexual is what I imagine, but when I say 'something', I never bothered to figure out what it was." At another time, Simon said the song, released in 1972, was "pure confection" and had no meaning.

Probably most people assume that "me" (whose gender is not specified in the song) is another boy and that the two boys were probably kissing or embracing. (In some states in 1972, gay sex was criminally illegal even for consenting adults in private. Bowers v Hardwick 1986 remained in force until Lawrence v Texas 2003 declared that Bowers was "wrong then and wrong now") I consider that interpretation to be the most likely.

(Perhaps the main reason why people assume that "me" is male is because there's a tendency to assume that a first person singular narrator is speaking for the author. Thus "me" is male because Paul Simon is male. But an author may well use a narrator who is very different from the author's self. As Ursula LeGuin pointed out (in the introduction to "The Left Hand of Darkness"), artists lie, usually lying to explore or reveal some aspect of an important truth. So "me" is not Simon's voice or his alter ego.)

Another interpretation is that "me's" parents are outraged because Julio is Hispanic, thus a different race and probably also different religion, Catholic. ("Poppa said 'oy' ", a quintessentially Jewish exclamation). In this case "me" could be a daughter. (Poppa's "get that boy" probably refers to Julio, not to "me" regardless of whether "me" is a son or a daughter.) Julio's parents may have similar predjudice and objections. Prior to Loving v Virginia, some states still had laws against racially mixed marriages. But Loving was decided in 1967, so by 1972 this wouldn't still be "against the law". But a high school kid, "me", wouldn't know that and both sets of parents might well disapprove whether or not they knew the current law..

(When I first heard the song, back in the 70's, I thought of Corona as being Corona, California. The area around Corona and Norco at that time was mostly rural and had a lot of horse farms. That's where I found my horse "Sunrise". But, as several commentators have pointed out, Simon is a New York boy, so Corona undoubtedly to him was the neighborhood in Queens, NY, a neighborhood where Simon grew up and one that at that time had many Hispanic residents, thus "Julio" and "Rosie"/ Rosa) may or may not represent friends of his.

There are other interpretations, including sharing a marijauna reefer.

You can get out of this song whatever you want to put into it.

notes on my own version :

The subtitle "Love in the Time of Corona" is inspired from the title of the novel (later film) "Love in the Time of Cholera", by Colombian Nobel prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The novel was first published in Spanish in 1985, in English in 1988, film in 2007. (I have not read it nor seen the film, but I found the information via Google.)

So far as I know there is no television station called KOVID. But currently (April, 2020), many stations have a great deal of COVID-19 coverage. Somewhat to my surprise there is a fictional, not actual, TV station called KVID. Also there is an FM radio station, KOVD, at 88.1 MHz in Colorado, which plays classical music.

It hardly seems necessary to identify Lady Macbeth as the poster child for obsessive hand-washing.

Like Simon, I have not explicitly said whether "me" is a boy or a girl, though the "Nine Black Robes" implied reference to Obergefell v Hodges implies that "me" is a boy, thus he and Julio are a gay couple seeking to marry. But perhaps the "Nine Black Robes" refers to Loving v Virginia legitimizing racially mixed marriages, and if so, then "me" might be boy or girl.

I've put in stanzas about both fathers' religious and racial predjudice. Please do understand that the offensive terms used portray the attituds of the two fathers, not my own attitudes. It's a bit ironic that these two, a Jewish man and a Hispanic man, would be biased against each other, because some people of Spanish descent are unknowingly also of Jewish descent. When Queen Isabella expelled the Jews from Spain, she gave them the alternative option to convert to Catholicism and remain in Spain. Some converted genuinely, but others conveted publically, attending church, but secretly practicing Judaism at home.

"Prom Queen" could be a girl or could be an openly gay boy who is well liked by classmates who relished the double entendre.

"the radical Pope" could be Francis saying that a gay person can still be a morally good person. Or it could be an earlier Pope giving acceptance to inter-faith marriages as well as inter-racial marriages.

Like Simon, I may prefer to remain mysterious and enigmatic. Most of this is coming from the right side of my brain, which often "has its reasons which Reason doesn't recognize".

You can get out of this song whatever you want to put into it.

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• Everybody Must Get Masked, a song about the need for face coverings in the COVID era.


• All I Want for Christmas is my COVID Vax. a song about wanting to get vaccinated as soon as possible and everyone else too.


• for a kareoke version of Simon's "Me and Julio". here is one (it will open in a new window.). I have not been able to find a MIDI or kareoke version with music I really like.


• Peggy and Sue Got Married, an updating of a Buddy Holly classic in light of the Supreme Court's rulings on DOMA and California Prop 8 and especially in Obergefell v Hodges.