Given my admiration for James Taylor and Cat Stevens, it probably is not surprising that I’m also a fan of Carly Simon. 

As a singer/songwriter, she paved her own way in the early 70’s and was able to almost seamlessly achieve and blend critical and commercial success – not an easy feat.  Of course, her success is even more impressive given that she’s rarely toured, suffering through bouts of debilitating stage fright throughout her career. 

Interestingly, when I listen to Carly’s music, it sometimes doesn’t feel right for the stage anyway; her delivery and lyrics are so intimate and personal, often, that it feels more like you’re sitting across the table from her sharing a cup of coffee and that she’s not really singing so much as speaking to you – not some generic audience, but YOU – with her carefully crafted words.

While she, indeed, possesses a distinctive voice – you know it as soon as you hear it – Carly’s gift isn’t necessarily her vocals per se, but her ability to tell stories through her songs, stories that draw you in, but always remain open to interpretation, and never offer an easy resolution.  I love that about her music.  That 30 years after the fact, people are still guessing the mysterious subject of her hit, “You’re So Vain,” is a testament to her ability as a storyteller. 

Many artists sing about relationships gone bad, or cheating lovers, but there was something about Carly’s composition and delivery of this song that raised the stakes somehow – people just HAD to know, and they still want to know.  “You walked into the party, like you were walking onto a yacht…” — one of the best opening lines of a song ever.

Speaking of opening lines, while each of her songs, as a whole, tells a story, her brilliance as a songwriter is showcased in the power of her individual lyrics to tell stories of their own, apart from the larger narrative of the song.  I’ve been moved sometimes by a simple lyric – a phrase or two that plays over again in your mind and evolves and becomes imbued with new meaning each time you hear it. 

One of my favorite songs of Carly’s is one of her earliest hits, “Anticipation,” a song that she wrote (no lie) while getting ready for a date with Cat Stevens (yes, this all geeks me out).  The song is interesting because given that it was written by a songwriter in her early 20’s,  it’s so smartly reflective about love, lust, the angst of dating, and the heady mix of elation and insecurity one often feels in the early stages of a relationship.  The line I love best in this song, though, is the last line of the final verse:

And tomorrow we might not be together
I’m no prophet, I don’t know nature’s way
So I’ll try to see into your eyes right now
And stay right here, ’cause these are the good old days.

Normally, you hear mature songwriters pining away about the stolen days of youth or the innocence they lost along the way – if they’d only have known then, what they know now, they would have appreciated those “good old days.”  But it seems like Carly always knew, and this is what makes her so special.

One of my favorite songs by two of my favorite artists:

Here’s another of my favorite Carly songs, that she wrote about her children, featuring her son Ben in the video: