Carly Simon Reveals “You’re So Vain” Subject—Mystery Solved After Years of Rumors!

Carly Simon finally says who “You’re So Vain” is written about, confirms what we knew all along

Carly Simon now reveals the subject of “You’re So Vain,” confirming our suspicions.Even though Carly Simon’s career took a drastic turn when she composed the song You’re So Vain, it’s still one of the greatest mysteries in rock ‘n’ roll. Simon is singing about someone, but who is it?

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There was some really amazing music during the 1970s. It was time for musicians like Bob Dylan and others to take over after bands like The Beatles had ruled the globe in the 1960s.

Songwriter and vocalist Carly Simon
Carly Simon was one among many who accomplished just that. When the amazing singer/songwriter’s career took off in the early 1970s, she quickly rose to prominence as one of the most well-liked performers.

You’re so Vain and many other New Yorker classics are well-known to us. What about her life, though? And what was the true subject of You’re so Vain? This is the amazing Carly Simon’s story.

Born in New York City on June 25, 1945, Carly Simon was the youngest child in an affluent family in the city. The publishing house Simon & Schuster was co-founded by her father, Richard Simon.

Carly Simon: early years
Now, Carly didn’t have a great upbringing. She felt inadequate a lot, being the third daughter. Was she really what her parents wanted?

“He had been hoping for a son, a male heir to be called Carl, after two daughters. He and Mommy just put a y, like an accusing chromosome, to the word when I was born: Carly,” she recalled.

Carly had a series of unsettling sex experiences with a teenage boy when she was just 7 or 8 years old.

“I was unaware that I was being taken advantage of,” she stated in a USA Today interview. “I believed that I was in love with him. I have no doubt that many girls experience similar things.

Carly had the opportunity to see the music industry from a young age. However, it would take some time for her to become the sensation that she already was.

Simon divided her time between a magnificent estate in Stamford, Connecticut, and her family’s apartment in Greenwich Village, New York. The young girl was surrounded by famous people, including Eleanor Roosevelt and Albert Einstein, at the Stamford home.

Jackie Robinson, the renowned baseball player, was also close friends with the Simon family and would eventually take Carly under his wing. Jackie Robinson and his family occupied the Stamford house while they were building their own residence.

made Jackie Robinson a friend.
She had the opportunity to sit in the dugout at the former Brooklyn Dodgers’ home, Ebbets Field. She quickly assumed the role of the team’s unofficial mascot.

“It never worked out, but Jackie even taught me how to bat lefty,” Simon stated in her 2015 memoir Boys in the Trees.

“He always had this adorable expression around the corner of his mouth, like he was considering what he was going to say before he said it.”

But a tragedy would befall the family. After being forced to leave his own business, Simon’s father passed away in 1960, one year before his daughter turned sixteen.

Carly, on the other hand, displayed an early passion for music. Later, she and her sister would seek a career in the industry. She began singing with her brother Joey, who went on to become a great writer and wrote the music for the Broadway production of The Secret Garden.

According to what Carly said on her website, in the summer of 1964, she and her sister Lucy hitchhiked up to Provincetown, Massachusetts after teaching themselves three guitar chords.

The group known as The Simon Sisters performed at The Moors, a neighborhood bar. Their repertoire included both original songs and traditional tunes.

While on tour with her sister Lucy, Carly Simon and Lucy were finally signed to Kapp Records. They performed in the UK as well as a few Greenwich Village venues, opening for early comics like Woody Allen and Dick Cavett.
Simon writes about her journey home by boat across the Atlantic in her memoir.

Carly and her sister ended up traveling with actor Sean Connery because they were on the same boat. Naturally, nobody could have predicted or even realized at that point that 12 years later, Carly would pen the Bond theme tune.

In the 1960s, the sister duet put out three albums until Lucy moved out to get married.

Even though Carly Simon was alone, she remained committed to pursuing a career in the music business. Her career, though, started off slowly. She began her career as a TV show secretary and as a summer camp counselor.

Carly’s professional life
Simon’s debut album, Carly Simon, was released in February 1971. Her first hit, the anti-marriage song That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be, peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 list.

Later that year, in October, Simon’s second album, Anticipation, was released. Things had really begun to blow up by now. The big tune Anticipation, which reached at No. 13 on the Billboard pop singles chart and No. 3 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart in the United States, was included in her album, which went gold in two years.

Simon claimed that she penned the song in about fifteen minutes while she waited for Cat Stevens, the man she was dating at the time, to arrive at her house to have dinner prepared. The music was ready when he got there, but the date didn’t last long.

Carly Simon remarked, “He gave me drawings of Blake poems and whispers.” “We struck up a conversation that has lasted since he told me about his early years and his mixed-race parents from Sweden and Greece.”

In just nine months, Simon achieved two hit albums, solidifying her status as a well-known and hugely popular singer/songwriter. She was nominated for a Grammy in the “Best Pop Female Vocalist” category in addition to winning the Best New Artist of the Year award in 1971.

“You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon
Carly Simon’s third album, which was supposed to be her great commercial breakthrough, was released in November 1972. No Secrets immediately became a gold record after spending five weeks at the top of the US Billboard 200 list.

The album was a huge hit that gained popularity globally, topping charts in nations like Norway, Australia, and Canada for weeks at a time. However, a certain song—the third one on the album—would permanently alter her course in life.

When discussing Carly Simon, most people bring up the song You’re So Vain. It was an instant hit and has only gotten bigger and greater over the years.

As of right now, the song is number 92 on Billboard’s list of the greatest songs ever recorded. When the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) polled people in 2014 on the greatest songs of the century, it came in at number 216. The UK Official Charts Company named it the greatest song of the 1970s that same year.

The album was recorded at London, England’s renowned Trident Studios, where David Bowie recorded Space Oddity and The Beatles recorded The White Album.

You’re So Stupid – audio
When You’re So Vain was first released, it was also full of secrets, and for a long time, it was the center of one of the greatest mysteries in rock ‘n’ roll. But that will come up shortly.

First of all, despite singing the chorus, Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger does not receive credit for the song.

While she was recording, a number of other well-known performers were present at Trident Studios, including Paul and Linda McCartney, Harry Nilsson, George Martin, and the late record producer. In actuality, McCartney contributed background vocals as a guest star.

And Mick Jagger came along afterwards. He actually invited himself to the session, as Carly Simon revealed in her autobiography. After learning she was in London, Jagger had followed her and phoned Trident Studios.

Not too long after midnight, in fact. Simon writes, “Mick and I were close; we had the same height, same coloring, and same lips.”

“I had the impression that I was attempting to maintain a pink gravity that was beginning to release its smooth hold on me. The closeness delighted me, as I reminisced about the several occasions I had mimicked him in front of my closet mirror.

You’re So Vain was a mystery in rock ‘n’ roll, as previously said. Finding out a song’s backstory, whether it be about a particular person, event, or if a single phrase alludes to something noteworthy, is always interesting.

You’re So Vain: What’s the subject?
In Carly Simon’s instance, nobody understood the significance of You’re So Vain.

A few people surmised and conjectured that Mick Jagger was the subject of the song. Yes, there was definitely a link between the two—especially considering that he contributed vocals to the album.

However, it appears that the rumors were untrue. In actuality, You’re So Vain—at least the second verse—is about her brief romance with Hollywood lothario Warren Beatty in the early 1970s.

“You had me while I was still pretty innocent a few years back.
You did say that we were a really attractive couple.
and that you would not abandon me.
However, you lost the things you treasured, including me.
Some fantasies I experienced involved clouds in my coffee.
My coffee has clouds in it.

Carly disclosed in her memoir that the song was actually about two more persons, though she declined to name them.

“I don’t believe so,” she said to People. “Until they realize it’s about them, at least.”

Most likely, if I had asked, “Remember that time you walked into the party and…” while we were having dinner together. I’m not sure if I’ll succeed. I never imagined that I would acknowledge that multiple others were involved.

Warren Beatty was a “glorious specimen” who put all other men “to shame, if looks and charm were what you were after,” according to Simon, who briefly dated him in the 1970s.

James Taylor – Carly Simon
What other relationships does Carly Simon have outside Warren? She did, however, have a previous marriage to singer-songwriter James Taylor.

In 1971, they had reconnected in her dressing room after their initial brief encounter as kids. In her book, she detailed the later meeting. Taylor was there with Joni Mitchell, his girlfriend at the time.

In her story, she described him as “barefoot, long-legged, long-footed, and with his knees bent.”

His right hand was gripping a self-rule cigarette while he wore loose, wide-wale, dark red corduroys and a long-sleeved Henley with one button open. His hair fell evenly on both sides of his head, and he had a scruffy, subtle mustache, the kind that was all the rage in the year 1970s. His hair was shining and untidy at the same time. He appeared well-groomed yet disheveled. Everything about him, even when he was lying on the ground, suggested that he was, in fact, the focal point of something—the heart of an apple, the heart of a message.

Later that year, Carly Simon and James Taylor began dating, and in November of 1972, they got married. The couple split after 11 years, but it wasn’t only because their love for one another had soured.

Carly Simon: kids
Simon clarified that the main reason for it was drug use. Their two grown children are currently employed in the music industry. Ben Taylor is 43 years old, and Sally Taylor is 46.

Her marriage to James Taylor is essentially where her biography Boys in the Trees stops. The book hasn’t been read by her son. However, her daughter has.

In 2016, Simon said to ABC, “I think he would feel more conflicted than Sally did.” “She was astonished to see everything that I had shared with her, even though I had told her nearly everything.” “I’m so proud of you for being able to tell it like it is for you,” she exclaimed.

Later, in 1985, Carly Simon became engaged to musician Russ Kunkel. In December 1987, she wed writer James Hart; however, the pair separated in 2007.

The 75-year-old Carly Simon planned to keep on recording music for a long time. And as a result, she kept winning prizes for her trophy cabinet.

Her global smash from 1977, Nobody Does It Better, used as the Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me’s title song. Many people believe it to be one of the best Bond anthems ever.

Induction into the Hall of Fame
She initially performed the song Let the River Run in the 1988 film Working Girl. She published the song in 1988. She made history with the song by becoming the first vocalist to win an Academy Award, a Grammy, and a Golden Globe for a single track.

Carly was admitted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1994, six years later.

Carly Simon’s life throughout the 1960s and 1970s was joyful. She is undoubtedly a legendary singer whose influence will never fade.