Saturday, November 21, 2015

Who's Really So Vain?

One of the biggest questions in music history: who was Carly Simon really referring to in her hit You're So Vain?
You remember: "I bet you think this song is about you, don't you?"
Actor Warren Beatty has long been a prime suspect, and now Carly has confirmed it. But Beatty's wrong if he thinks the whole song is about him.
Carly's revealed he was only the subject of the second verse:
"You had me several years ago when I was still quite naive
Well you said that we made such a pretty pair
And that you would never leave
But you gave away the things you loved and one of them was me
I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee
Clouds in my coffee, and..."

Speaking about her new memoir Boys in the Trees, Simon says: "I've confirmed that the second verse is Warren." Asked if he knew this, she said that, in keeping with the song's theme, "Warren thinks the whole thing is about him!"
You're so Vain sold more than a million copies when it went to No.1 in USA in 1972-73 and, for more than 40 years, Simon has never publicly revealed the name of the subject, hinting that it could be a combination of people rolled into one.
Speculation has ranged from Beatty - once Simon's boyfriend - to her former husband James Taylor, to Mick Jagger (who sang back-up on the track) to showbiz tycoon David Geffen - though Simon squashed that rumour when it surfaced in 2010 (saying she didn't even know Geffen in '71 when she wrote the song).
Two other egotists are yet to be named. Asked if she will ever name the other two men, Simon says: "I don't think so, at least until they know it's about them."

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