Carly Simon

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"you belong to me".... next "that's the way i've always heard it to be"....

"Why?" is not one of my favorites. I don't dislike it. There are just many others I like more. It's hard to pick a favorite. What Carly fan doesn't love her '70s anthem, You're So Vain? I like so many songs from Anticipation, Hotcakes, Boys in the Trees, Coming Around Again, Spoiled Girl.

The line "Nobody does it half as good as you" drives the Oh, Dear, in me up a wall every time I hear it. Always has.

One I really like that most people don't mention is "Hello, Big Man," a song she wrote about her parents' relationship. I'm going to enter that as my favorite tonight.

That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be still haunts me almost fifty years later.

I love "Coming Around Again / Itsy Bitsy Spider" and I love her 1987 "Live from Martha's Vineyard" concert.

"Coming Around Again". G toot meet her at Tower Records and have her Greatest Hits signed. It's like a book with the discs inside.

For personal reasons, "Coming Around Again."

Second would be "You Belong to Me". Love those opening chords. But it's a toss up as to whether I preferhers or Michael McDonald's version. (They wrote the song together.)

Since someone already gave us "Coming Around Again"...

"We're So Close"

A deep cut from the poorly-received 1979 "Spy" album. I heard it a couple of times back when it was released, and I never forgot it.

That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be. Beautiful melody and haunting lyrics. Perfect for her voice.

Two Little Sisters is a close second. It was written for the movie Marvin's Room and has Meryl Streep doing some backup vocals.

"The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of" (from the Coming Around Again album, here live)

And I should say, those are my favorite songs as was asked, but I don't think they're her most indelible songs. Or "best" songs.

All of the ones listed above and this little gem...

I always liked "Back Down to Earth"

Tell us about your indelibles, r11.

"You're So Vain" probably tops that list for me. And the entire Anticipation album, before she became famous famous. I can picture today the various candles I lit while listening in the dark with someone. Here's "I've Got to Have You."

Another failed relation ship song I like a lot.

"I Haven't Got Time For The Pain". Love It.

I agree with R4: That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be.

I wonder when she'll finally use the final bullet in her gun and reveal who "you're so vain" is.

She's eliminated Taylor and Jagger.

Simon: “I have confirmed that the second verse is Warren.”

She claims first and third are about other people.

I should have given you the live version, which is sublime (for a live version.)

Indelible? Without a doubt, "You're So Vain", and then "That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be", and "Haven't Got Time for the Pain."

I haven't gone through her whole catalogue, but those are the songs I think are indelible.

I’ve always liked Jesse and the video of her live performance at Grand Central Station. How lucky were the folks commuting through there that day.

"That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be," live from Central Park, 1971.

‘You’re So Vain’

"Someone Waits For You", main theme from Swing Shift.

"Our First Day Together," another favorite from Anticipation. It's been a 1971 kind of day for me today. I started reading The Winds of War again today. I've been taking Italian for a couple of years, and I wanted to check out the lives of Briny, Natalie, and Aaron in Siena as WWII starts.

R20 I love Jesse. It's one of my favorite songs to listen to as I get ready for work in the morning.

Tired of Being Blonde is one of my all time favorite songs as well as my favorite Carly song.

Dis 1.

The entire Spoiled Girl album is terrific.

Another vote for "Coming Around Again," but I urge anyone unfamiliar with the fashions of the "Give Me All Night" video to check it out.

I love this song

R28: I had my link ready to post for Give Me All Night and you just pipped me, love that song!

I’ll go with a shift in tempo and pick another of my favourites: Never Been Gone

Mockingbird.

Love Carly. And love all the selections already posted.

R13: thanks for posting that, it’s great. I got into Carly Simon in about 1999/2000 when I bought the Clouds In My Coffee book/CDs and though I’ve been a fan for 20+ years I’ve never gone through all her albums so it’s great discovering new good songs.

"Words of love, soft and tender like clouds above, drift away...... ' I think the song's title is " Forever My Love" from the album "Hotcakes". Went to her house a few times in MV. She liked that I knew the lyrics but not the titles to most of her songs.

Ugh. Overrated hack with a SUPER creepy family background, despite the Simon “name.” She makes my skin crawl.

"Mind On My Man" was one of my favorites. Love love love Carly!

R19... yeah, the top 3, you belong to me, haven't got time for the pain and that's the way i've always heard it should be....

favorite album is the boys in the trees album... not a bad song on it....

Ok R35 but what's your favorite song by her? That was the question after all...

I know they’re not written by her but i love two songs from her album “My Romance”. In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning and Time After Time ( Cole Porter song not the Cyndi Lauper song). I have an affinity for those two.

Carly is a class act. I didn’t know she was friends with Jackie O.

R25, are you me? Those are two of my favorites as well. Jesse is the song that got me into her music.

I’ll throw out an obscure one: Take Me As I Am. Has hit song written all over it but I don’t think it charted. I don’t know the history of the Come Upstairs album but it seems like the label didn’t know how to promote it properly despite Jesse being a huge hit

There was a DL thread about OP's video a few years ago. It made many posters wistful for the early 80s UES (?) and specifically the restaurant. Duxelles was it? Looks like she was having a high ol' time spontaneously crashing brunch service.

My favorite record of hers is her version of Moonlight Serenade. My favorite organic Carly Simon song is Mockingbird with James Taylor and I'm not joking.

[quote]One I really like that most people don't mention is "Hello, Big Man," a song she wrote about her parents' relationship.

She later revealed that the song was a lie. Yes, her parents met when her mother worked the switchboard at Simon & Schuster and their first exchange was "Hello little lady" "Hello big man" but their marriage was a disaster. Her father suffered from depression and was still attached to a much older woman from when he was a boy. And her mother had her college student lover move into the house. There was a secret passageway linking their bedrooms, which Carly's mother would crawl through to get fucked. So the lyrics "He did it all for her" were a sham.

I love the "We're So Close."

The lyrics are brutal.

Spring Is Here

I remember seeing Carly and James together on Dick Cavett and Dick called Carly ‘the ugly sister’ to her face

Her autobiography was very interesting and well written. (Not the one about Jackie O, that was dull.)

She admits to being sexually abused as a child, but she doesn't seem to link that to her later habit of having sex with anyone.

And she certainly pulls her punches about James Taylor, except for entitling one chapter "Strip, Bitch"

[quote]My favorite organic Carly Simon song is Mockingbird with James Taylor and I'm not joking.

Organic?

Surprised no one has mentioned "Right Thing to Do," which is a perfect pop tune.

Let's close now.

The album I go back to the most is Torch. And this is my favorite off that album.

Bump

I forgot how well Carly Simon was able to reproduce the sound of her music live. For someone with stage fright, she moved well on stage and she sounded great.

R31 it’s very easy to watch James Taylor shake and shimmy onstage with Simon in the clip of mockingbird. He was an eyeful, and so talented.

James Taylor and Carly Simon ended up hating each other, right? They were a pretty striking couple. Simon moved in literary circles on The Vineyard, with The Styrons, Peter Feibleman, probably John Hersey. She came from a publishing family, Simon of Simon & Schuster. Friends of mine saw her often on the upper East Side in NYC in the 1990’s, and said she was very thin and seemed uncomfortable around strangers. She has an amazing history, but I never quite felt like reading her memoir, or really cared about her friendship with Jackie Onassis. Onassis sounded like a real drip. I remember some funny passages in Warhol’s diaries about how brittle and snotty Onassis was. That crowd on Martha’s Vineyard was something else.

Not considering her most famous songs, I quite like this one. She wrote it after her mother died.

R54, this thread will tell you all you need to know and then some about James Taylor and Carly Simon.

[quote]James Taylor and Carly Simon ended up hating each other, right?

No. James Taylor ended up hating Carly Simon. But I think James Taylor is a very cold, damaged person who finds it easy to ghost people.

Carly Simon has been very hurt by Taylor frosting her out of his life, especially as they have children together.

She knows that he hates it when she talks about him, which is why she pulled punches in her memoir about what a fucked-up drug addict he was when they were married.

I know Carly. We are not close friends, but we speak.

She is very funny and intelligent. And has a wonderfully biting wit.

She would get along with you bitches very well.

Is it true that she's a quarter black? Those luscious lips would suggest yes.