The rhythm tracks are performed by Grupo Cultural Olodum, a drumming collective ("bloco afro") directed by "Neguinho do Samba" (Alves de Souza) and also signed to Warner Bros.

Writer Steve Sullivan writes that the figure is a "standard device" for the group, who also employ abbreviated versions of it elsewhere on the album: "Salvador Nao Inerte" and "Vinheta Cuba-Brasil".

[3] Following this, the song breaks into an instrumental fragment that, according to Stephen Holden of The New York Times, echoes the Silhouettes' 1957 doo-wop hit, "Get a Job".

[3] Holden considered it a story of an everyman pondering the uncertainty of life whilst navigating his high school yearbook.

[4] Rolling Stone's John Mcalley too found it an everyman battling the fact that his "days have become defined by their limitations and dogged ordinariness.

With its juxtaposition of early rock-and-roll and South American percussion that echoes the martial drumbeats on Mr. Simon's 1975 hit, "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover", it telescopes pop fragments that span more than three decades and three continents into an allusive musical reverie that is beyond generic designation.

Even more than on his 1986 masterpiece, the album Graceland, Mr. Simon has melded, reshaped and refined the roots music of divergent cultures into a studio art song of layered textures and wistful, mysterious poetry.

[4]Greg Sandow of Entertainment Weekly praised the song's "confident drums that resound with special exuberant zing.

"[18] A reviewer for People felt that "the more exotic musical elements are subsumed by Simon's pretty pop structures [...] You never get the impression that Paul has truly gone native or even considered it.

Club, examined the song; he called it "the perfect confluence of the wild, frenetic drumming and Simon's folksy melodies.