Fifty years ago this week, Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” hit #1 on Billboard Magazine’s Hot 100 list. The song, track # 3 on side one of the album “No Secrets,” was released by Elektra Records, on November 28, 1972. The album spent five weeks at #1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart. The song entered #99 on the Billboard Hot 100 on December 2, 1972 and took five more weeks to rise to #1 where it remained for the first three weeks of 1973. It was replaced by Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” and spent the next month in the runner-up slot. It also spent two weeks at the top of the Easy Listening chart in early 1973, her first #1 on either chart. The album is a classic remembered principally for two things. First, the album cover that features Carly leaving the Portobello Hotel, on Stanley Gardens in London’s Notting Hill, on an apparently chilly day. (Google it and you’ll understand.) Let’s just say that Farrah Fawcett’s swimsuit poster has nothing on Carly. And second, just who was that mystery man Carly sang about in her hit “You’re So Vain”?
Carly wrote the song in 1971 and it was released in November of 1972. The song is ranked at #92 on Billboard’s Greatest Songs of All Time. “You’re So Vain” was voted #216 in the Recording Industry Association of America’s Songs of the Century, and in August 2014, the UK’s Official Charts Company crowned it the ultimate song of the 1970s. In 2021, the song was ranked 495th on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It was nominated for Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the 16th Annual Grammy Awards. In 2004, the song received the Grammy Hall of Fame Award. Nobody remembers any of that though. They only remember the rumors surrounding THAT song.
The song’s chorus, “You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you” appears no less than eleven times (in one form or another) throughout the song, offering a critical profile of a self-absorbed lover. Anyone who grew up in the 1970s can pretty much sing the song word for word with little (and regrettably, sometimes no) prompting. The imagery the lyrics present is as clear as any song ever written. Whether it describes an apricot scarf or a “hat strategically dipped below one eye,” the song walks the listener through a high society party better than an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel could generations before.
The song also includes references to objects that are easily sung but harder to define. “You had one eye in the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte.” Gavotte is a pretentious French dance. “I hear you went up to Saratoga and your horse naturally won” refers to the Saratoga New York Race Course whose summertime horse-racing season is frequented by the rich and famous. “Then you flew your Learjet up to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun” references the total solar eclipse of July 10, 1972, visible only in Nova Scotia, Alaska, and parts of Canada. And according to Carly, the line “clouds in my coffee” came “from an airplane flight that I took with Billy Mernit, who was my friend and piano player at the time. As I got my coffee, there were clouds outside the window of the airplane and you could see the reflection in the cup of coffee. Billy said to me, ‘Look at the clouds in your coffee’.” Later she further explained, “Clouds In My Coffee are the confusing aspects of life and love. That which you can’t see through, and yet seems alluring…until. Like a mirage that turns into a dry patch. Perhaps there is something in the bottom of the coffee cup that you could read if you could (like tea leaves or coffee grinds).” The song’s distinctive bass guitar intro is played by Klaus Voormann, an artist who was one of the earliest associates of The Beatles in Hamburg, Germany in the early 1960s. Listen to Voorman’s casual, yet methodical, strumming and you’ll hear Carly whisper “Son of a gun” above the chords to kick off the song.
Still, who is she singing about? That question has long been a matter of speculation, with the songwriter’s own caginess over the years adding to the mystery. Simon often stated that the song is an amalgam of three men, only one of whom she has named publicly: Warren Beatty. According to Simon, who played piano on the track, the song was originally titled “Bless You, Ben.” The song started off, “Bless you, Ben. You came in when nobody else left off, there I was, by myself, hiding up in my loft.” Simon didn’t think that worked, so she shelved the song until she attended a party one night where a famous guest appeared. One of her friends told Simon “Doesn’t he look like he’s just walked onto a yacht?” The song was off and running. Before the song became a hit single in 1972, Simon told one interviewer that the song was about “men,” not a specific “man.” Because he sang background on the track, rumors quickly flew that the song was about the Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger. Carly denied that in a 1983 magazine interview.
So the gossip mags ginned up the next conspiracy, this one claiming that it was about her new husband James Taylor, who also sang backup on the album. The couple married in 1972 and divorced in 1983. Carly pointed out that Paul McCartney and his wife Linda also sang backup on the album. So did Harry Nilsson, Bonnie Bramlett, and Little Feat’s Lowell George, and the song isn’t about any of them either. Over the years, David Cassidy, Cat Stevens, David Geffen, Kris Kristofferson, and David Bowie have all been cited by the press as speculative candidates. In a 1993 book, Angie Bowie claimed to be the “wife of a close friend” mentioned in the song and that Jagger had been “obsessed” with her at one time. In 2001, Simon hinted at the subject’s identity on Janet Jackson’s 2001 single, “Son of a Gun (I Betcha Think This Song Is About You),” which sampled “You’re So Vain”. Simon said the apricot scarf was worn by writer Nick Delbanco, whom she may have been involved with in the 1960s.
In August 2003, Simon agreed to reveal the name of the song’s subject to the highest bidder of the Martha’s Vineyard Possible Dreams charity auction. With the top bid of $50,000, Dick Ebersol, president of NBC Sports and a friend of Simon, won the right to know the name of the subject of “You’re So Vain.” The only condition? Ebersol agreed not to reveal the name. Ebersol said Simon agreed that he could give a clue about the person’s name. And Ebersol’s clue was: The letter ‘E’ is in the person’s name. Alrighty then. More of a broken cipher than a clue, but hey, I guess it is something. Since then, Simon has given more “letter clues.” In 2004, Simon told Regis Philbin, “I’ve given out two letters already, an ‘A’ and an ‘E’. But I’m going to add one to it. I’m going to add an ‘R’ in honor of you.” In 2005, Simon’s ex-husband Jim Hart claimed the song was about one of Carly’s old boyfriends who was certainly not famous. In a 2007 interview, Warren Beatty said, “Let’s be honest. That song was about me.” In 1983, Simon said Beatty “certainly thought it was about him — he called me and said thanks for the song.” After her live performance of the song with Simon in July 2013, Taylor Swift stated that Simon had revealed the identity of the song’s subject to her in confidence. However, the true identity of the song’s subject remains unknown by all but a precious few.
“No Secrets” was the third studio album by Simon. Of the 10 songs, Carly wrote 9 of them. Her husband James Taylor wrote the other. Aside from “You’re So Vain,” the album’s second single, “The Right Thing to Do,” reached #17 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #4 on the Adult Contemporary chart. The album was officially certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on December 12, 1997. “No Secrets” is ranked #997 in All-Time Top 1000 Albums (3rd. edition, 2000). Simon recorded the album at Trident Studios in London, where many other notable albums, including The Beatles’ “White Album,” David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” and Elton John’s second album, were recorded and engineered. Looking back, some of the early reviews for “No Secrets” were less than kind, and on the wrong side of history. Newsday and Village Voice columnist Robert Christgau, writing in Creem, said, “if a horse could sing in a monotone, the horse would sound like Carly Simon, only a horse wouldn’t rhyme ‘yacht’, ‘apricot’, and ‘gavotte’. Is that some kind of joke?” Mr. Christgau is a legend among music critics but relatively unknown to all but the most devoted of music fans. While Carly Simon’s signature song Your So Vain remains her biggest hit and the imagery it presents makes it the epitome of Pop Culture poetry.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
