TRYING to make it on your own merits in the music business when you’re the child of a hugely famous singer is far from easy.

Yes, securing a record deal and getting the media buzzing around you is pretty much a given but from that initial point onwards, it can be a very tough road for, being the son/ daughter of a legend comes with a big burden of expectation.

There are the success stories, Miss Liza Minelli(daughter of Judy Garland) springs immediately to mind but on the flip side you’ve got the likes of Jakub Dylan(son of Bob), Julian and Sean Lennon(sons of John) and Ben Taylor(son of James Taylor and Carly Simon) to name just a few of the children of ultra famous parents who have found it so very difficult carving out the same career path as their superstar mother/father.

But the heavy odds stacked against them achieving anything like the same level of fame/success rarely seems to deter the kids of music gods from having a go themselves.

The latest child of a music legend to throw his hat into the same ring as his dad and attempt to follow in his very famous footsteps is Harper Simon, son of a certain Paul Simon.

I say child but he’s hardly a kid anymore since its taken him until the age of thirty-seven to get around to putting out his debut album, eponymously titled ‘Harper Simon’ but in this instance it’s a long wait that has proved to be worthwhile.

The desire to make comparisons to his father will no doubt be immediate rather than first judging him as an artist in his own right but that, I’m afraid, comes with the territory and is predictably inevitable.

If you close your eyes whilst listening to Harper’s album, you probably will get a vision of the young Paul Simon, circa the mid 1960’s as on much of the record, Harper’s vocals do bear an uncanny resemblance to those of his father’s.

But this should just tell you that the singing on the album is very good with some fine harmonising that will no doubt make his dad feel extremely proud. Harper’s voice is not on quite the same level as Paul’s, being somewhat thinner but he is still capable of carrying a tune with ease, as demonstrated throughout the album and it’s a voice that’s a lot sweeter and melodic in tone than those of more higher profile artists one could mention.

Although he’s ‘getting on a bit’ in terms of just starting out, Harper has been involved with music since a very young age. He appeared with his father on Sesame Street when just four, by twelve he was a guest guitarist on selected dates on Paul’s ‘Graceland’ tour, he’s been in a band or two that failed to ignite and he’s spent time writing and recording his own material in Nashville. Some personal problems that are now thankfully behind him and fear, no doubt of failing to live up to high expectations, have clearly held Harper back in the past but this could just be the record that launches him, if not into the realms of superstardom (that’s probably unlikely to be fair, then at the very least on a respectable and steady music career path as he clearly has the talent in abundance to be heard by a wide audience and to hopefully build upon this very promising debut record.

There might not be a ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ on show here but melancholy drenched songs such as ‘Berkeley Girl’ and ‘All I Have Are Memories’ should make all sit up and take notice of Harper Simon.