Deep Album Cuts Vol. 274: Carly Simon
Carly Simon will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in November alongside Pat Benatar, Duran Duran, Eminem, Eurythmics, Dolly Parton, and Lionel Richie. And to be honest, she was probably the artist I was most surprised to see make the cut this year, but it gave me a reason to dive into her catalog beyond the hits and learn more about her.
Carly Simon deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):
1. Just A Sinner
2. I've Got To Have You
3. The Girl You Think You See
4. Waited So Long
5. Night Owl
6. We Have No Secrets
7. Haven't Got Time For The Pain
8. Hotcakes
9. Playing Possum
10. One Love Stand
11. Be With Me
12. Dishonest Modesty
13. Boys In The Trees
14. De Bat (Fly In Me Face)
15. Back Down To Earth
16. Memorial Day
17. Pure Sin
18. Them
19. From The Heart
20. Such A Good Boy
21. Spoiled Girl
22. Do The Walls Come Down
Track 1 from Carly Simon (1971)
Tracks 2 and 3 from Anticipation (1971)
Track 19 from Torch (1981)Tracks 4, 5 and 6 from No Secrets (1972)
Tracks 7 and 8 from Hotcakes (1974)
Track 9 from Playing Possum (1975)
Tracks 10, 11 and 12 from Another Passenger (1976)
Tracks 13, 14 and 15 from Boys In The Trees (1978)
Tracks 16 and 17 from Spy (1979)
Track 18 from Come Upstairs (1980)
Track 20 from Hello Big Man (1983)
Track 21 from Spoiled Girl (1985)
Track 22 from Coming Around Again (1987)
I feel like Carly Simon was one of the big three artists who really cemented the female singer-songwriter archetype that became such a big part of pop music in the 1970s, alongside Joni Mitchell and Carole King. All three worked extensively with one of the era's preeminent male singer-songwriters, James Taylor, who Simon was married to. And Taylor and Simon were probably music's biggest platinum power couple of the '70s, the closest thing that era had to a Jay-Z and Beyonce (you can hear Taylor's backing vocals pretty clearly on some of these songs, including "Waited So Long" and "Playing Possum").
Simon's not as revered as a songwriter as Mitchell and King, and was a bit more of a sex symbol and a tabloid fixture. But she was a pretty impressive writer at times, "Dishonest Modesty" and "Them" and "The Girl You Think You See" being deep cuts that really stuck out to me for their lyrics. "You're So Vain," and the decades of coy hints and debate about whether it was about Mick Jagger or Warrent Beatty or whoever, may as well have created the blind item pop song, a tradition that's been carried on heavily in recent years by Taylor Swift, Drake and others.
Kris Kristofferson wrote "I've Got To Have You," which wasn't released as a single in the U.S. but was a top 10 hit in Australia. Carly Simon didn't release "We Have No Secrets" or her cover of James Taylor's "Night Owl" as singles, but both appeared on the triple platinum The Best of Carly Simon compilation, her best-selling release. In 2015, Simon published a memoir, Boys In The Trees. And its companion album, Songs In The Trees (A Musical Memoir Collection), featured a number of album tracks, including "Boys In The Trees," "I've Got To Have You," and "We Have No Secrets."
There are a ton of big name musicians on Carly Simon's records, but also some surprising celebrities on backing vocals, like Tim Curry on "Pure Sin" and Laraine Newman on "Them." Lowell George and Bill Payne of Little Feat played on "Waited So Long" and her cover of Little Feat's "One Love Stand," which also has some tasty backing vocals from Michael McDonald (who co-wrote one of Simon's biggest hits, "You Belong To Me"). I didn't expect to find a song like "Memorial Day" in Simon's catalog, which feels almost like her answer to Steely Dan's "Aja": an 8-minute epic with multiple tempo changes and a Steve Gadd drum solo (incidentally, the same album has a song co-written by Libby Titus, who'd later marry Donald Fagen).
"De Bat (Fly In Me Face)" is an embarrassing little novelty song Simon sings in a Caribbean patois (with Luther Vandross on backing vocals!), it was singled out for scorn by Gawker some years ago. Kind of an unfortunate presence on one of her best and most popular albums (a decade later, she also closed her comeback album Coming Around Again with the title track sort of remixed into "Itsy Bitsy Spider"). Thankfully, she didn't attempt any kind of Jamaican accent again when she collaborated with Sly and Robbie on two songs on Hello Big Man, including "Such A Good Boy." Looking at some of her setlists, it appears that "De Bat" is bafflingly a staple of Carly Simon's concerts, alongside better songs like "Haven't Got Time For The Pain," "We Have No Secrets," "I've Got To Have You."
Torch was Carly Simon's first album of standards, which has become kind of a trademark of the second half of her career. 5 of the 13 albums she's released since 1980 have been collections of standards, she was kind of ahead of the curve of other aging rockers like Rod Stewart doing albums of old jazz ballads and Tin Pan Alley songs. But I included the one original song she wrote for Torch, "From The Heart." It was the last album she released before she and Taylor divorced, so it feels like there's maybe a personal subtext to her singing all these old iconic songs of heartbreak.
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