Coming Around Again (1987)Ĭoming Around Again became a Mellow Magic FM perennial, but beneath the super-smooth MOR production lurks a fabulous, genuinely moving song that tackles a subject pop tends to shy away from – the stresses of maintaining a longstanding relationship amid the chaos of parenthood – without succumbing to syrup or schmaltz. More than a dry run for the peerless You’re So Vain, it’s a fabulous song in its own right, filled with gloriously unexpected twists in its tune and mood. On which Simon first unleashed one of her characteristic songwriting styles, the alternately affectionate and withering pen portrait of an ostensibly successful (and clearly quite hot) man. The single version, which lops off the OTT operatic coda, is the one. The gut-punching emotional zenith of her concept album Letters Never Sent, Like a River tackles the death of Simon’s mother and the complexities of her family relationships – sibling squabbles over her late mum’s jewellery are “all a metaphor for what was wrong with us”. A 2009 re-recording has a Neil Young-ish lilt, but the piano-led original best fits the lyric, about home as an escape from the world. Never Been Gone (1979)įrom the album Spy, its hushed, vaguely hymnal sound the counterpoint to rocky hit single Vengeance or its disco-infused title track, Never Been Gone is one of the hidden gems of Simon’s catalogue. It flows so easily – driven by the congas of Ray Cooper, “the Jimi Hendrix of percussion”, according to Elton John – you scarcely notice how melodically complex it is. The Right Thing To Do (1972)Īn album stuffed with songs about unrequited crushes, relationship woe and dodgy exes, No Secrets nevertheless opens with a heartfelt, breezily uplifting declaration of love. Nine months after her debut, Anticipation was a vast leap forward, defining Simon as a plain-speaking, distinctly un-hippy-ish, very New York brand of confessional singer-songwriter: the title track found her waiting for her current boyfriend, Cat Stevens, to show up, while already consigning their relationship to history: “These are the good old days.”įrom her home-recorded album The Bedroom Tapes – an overlooked return to prime form – Actress is the kind of Simon song you could easily imagine Taylor Swift (a self-confessed fan) performing: a witty sideswipe at the pursuit of fame, smart enough to reserve a degree of empathy for its protagonist. A depiction of a former 60s radical now comfortably settled, its concluding question – “Are you finally satisfied?” – seems to be as directed at the narrator as at her subject.
The standout title track of a very patchy album, Playing Possum is a perfect example of Simon’s ability to incisively skewer the boomer generation at various points in their history. Umpteen artists pivoted towards disco in the late 70s, but Carly Simon did it with particular style, as evidenced by the Arif Mardin-produced Tranquillo: five minutes (in its 12in mix) of supremely funky bass, spiralling vocals, soaring choruses and, improbably, a lyric about trying get a small child to go to bed. We Just Got Here (1990)īetter Not Tell Her, the hit from Have You Seen Me Lately, was Simon in full-on, post-divorce lock-up-your-husbands mode, but its closing track was something else: a beautifully observed, subtly orchestrated, gorgeously bittersweet song about a couple facing life together after their children leave home. Simon performs during An Evening with Carly Simon hosted by the Grammy Museum at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, 2009.
But her first hit single is great: a surging, epic, wary depiction of marriage – “the couples cling and claw and drown in love’s debris” – from a woman declining to say “I do”. Simon’s eponymous 1971 debut is an artist finding her feet, tending towards country-ish arrangements which don’t suit her voice. That’s The Way I Always Heard It Should Be (1971) Or possibly even sharper, as evidenced by the chanson-like, savagely funny We Your Dearest Friends, on which a tableful of dinner-party guests relentlessly trash an absent acquaintance.
Simon has released more Great American Songbook standards than original material in recent years, but her own writing is as sharp as ever. Some of it is bizarre – in the unlikely event you want to hear a Carly Simon track that sounds a bit like Devo, hasten to Them – but the vaguely Springsteen-esque Jesse is a triumph: killer chorus, economical storytelling. The Come Upstairs album was a concerted effort by Simon to embrace new wave. Photograph: Globe Photos/mediapunch/Rex/Shutterstock 17.
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