Meditations On Crime

Meditations on Crime Book

“Everyone is fascinated by crime,” says Harper Simon. “When you look at the history of song, romantic love songs may be the dominant mode of songwriting, but second would probably be songs involving crime—murder ballads, political protest songs; crime is a major theme in all songwriting.”

Simon offers a new and expansive contribution to this legacy with Meditations on Crime, an ambitious multi-media project that includes an album he produced of musical collaborations with a sweeping range of contributors (Julia Holter, Gang Gang Dance, King Khan, the Sun Ra Arkestra) and a book he edited featuring essays by such notables as Miranda July, Hooman Majd, and Jerry Stahl, alongside artwork from giants like Cindy Sherman, Tracey Emin, Julian Schnabel, and Raymond Pettibon.

The genesis of Meditations on Crime came in 2016 as the confluence of several ideas. Simon was interested in collaborating with musicians he knew and admired, to create a vinyl LP with an accompanying book—"a beautiful physical object to stand outside the digital world.” Given what America was going through during that particular election year, though, he also thought it was a time that called for something more politically charged. Meditations on Crime—if you get down to it, crime is politics and politics is crime, so crime can go a lot of different ways. It seemed to be a way of approaching the moment that was a little more subtle and left space to explore.”