#2: You’re So Vain by Carly Simon
by Craig Ennew
Carly Simon famously stated that this 1972 song was penned with diminutive heartthrob Warren Beatty in mind. Later, changing her story, the toothy chanteuse claimed it was really about three different men, Beatty being the only poor sod named. Over the years, the coyness evaporated and many other names were dragged into the fray: Mick Jagger, Cat Stevens (really?) and various other leviathans of the Seventies pop and rock scene. Simon did go out of her way to state that another lover – James Taylor – was categorically not the person she had in mind; in those days, I’m not sure whether ‘Sweet Baby James’ would have taken this as compliment or an insult. Whichever way, all are taught a valuable lesson.
Don’t date Carly Simon.
You’ll end up being one of the clouds in her coffee for sure. More on the clouds in a bit…
With Warren Beatty in mind, we come to the central issue I have with these lyrics. We find it in the titular refrain:
You’re so vain / You probably think this song is about you
I’m imagining Warren sitting there, shaving his chest, when this song comes on the radio. He’s thinking: ‘Ooh – that song is about ME!’
The problem we have here is that Warren is not wrong. The truth, after all, comes from Carly Simon’s very own (and very wide) mouth: the song actually is about him. If it wasn’t she could say, ‘But it’s not, so screw you!’ But now she can’t because Bigmouth has struck again. So who’s the winner here? I say Warren, because he’s rattled his ex so much that she’s knocked out a greatest hit about him (and possibly Mick Jagger and a few others too). I’d be proud.
We have, then, what we call a musical paradox. And it does my head in.
Then there’s the opening:
You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht / Your hat strategically dipped below one eye / Your scarf it was apricot / You had one eye in the mirror, as you watched yourself gavotte
Plenty to pick apart here. For starters, Warren has his hat – I’m picturing a floppy purple fedora – ‘strategically dipped’ below one eye. He also manages to have ‘one eye in the mirror’. This can’t be the same eye – the fecker wouldn’t be able to see himself. So, both eyes occupied elsewhere, how does the poor man see where he’s going? No wonder he’s walking like he’s on a yacht – he can see jack shit. Yet, despite this irritating disability, Warren is still able to ‘gavotte’. Yeah – I know: I had to look it up, too. And if, like me, you typed it into Google, you’ll discover that a gavotte an obscure ‘lively C18th French peasant dance of the Brittany region’ whose only claim to fame is being mentioned in a Carly Simon song. Oh – and it conveniently happens to rhyme with ‘yacht’. Lucky, that.
So let’s return to those clouds:
I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee / Clouds in my coffee and…
This is clearly a metaphor she is pleased with – she uses it no fewer than three times. I have to say, it doesn’t work for me. The viscosity and obscuration of coffee makes this near-impossible to occur – it’s not like ink in water or anything, is it? Perhaps she means the milk going into the coffee. But then, if the milk is the clouds that are dreams, then what’s the actual coffee? Warren? Yachts? Life itself? Who bloody knows.
By the close of the song, Warren has dragged his sorry arse and massive ego around the world – Saratoga and the aptly-rhyming Nova Scotia being two named conquests. He ends his trip with some underworld spy or the wife of a close friend. On Carly Simon’s part, this is quite an escalation: one minute celebrity philanderer, the next the Anthony Blunt of Tinseltown. Frankly, I’m surprised that she wasn’t sued for that one. Warren should have the last word:
I bet you think this accusation of libel is about you – don’t you? Don’t you?
Yeah- that’s because it is.
***
Next Time: Are We Human? by The Killers
Craig Ennew Writes 