Carly and Her Daughters, page 2
Yes, there's something vaguely embarrassing about Simon -- the attention-craving boho sexual poses, the coy look-at-my-diary lyrics, the daughter-of-privilege angst. For any other recording artist, a 17-page spread in Vanity Fair airing the dirt about one's dead parents' marital infidelities might have seemed like an odd piece to serve as a tickler for a forthcoming album. But for Simon, whose entire career has been a sort of public psychotherapy, the August article that preceded her new three-CD career retrospective "Clouds in My Coffee" (Arista) and detailed the emotional torment caused by a mother who viewed Carly and her two sisters as sexual rivals ("We were living in a Tennessee Williams play," Simon states) was just about right.
Despite, or because of all this, Simon has had as lasting an impact as Mitchell on pop music; in certain areas of her career, Simon was astonishingly ahead of her time. Way before "Oprah" (not to mention Alanis Morissette), Simon's1971 debut smash single "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be," featuring harrowing imagery of her parents' loveless marriage, introduced dysfunctional families and "healing" confessionalism into the popular consciousness.
The 58-track-deep "Clouds in My Coffee" (the packaging of which literally turns Simon's life into an open book) finds Simon working through the gamut of her "issues" (father issues, mother issues, sibling rivalry issues, and on and on) and somehow, somehow, she always plucks herself up and survives the tsuris. By God, she hasn't got time for the pain!
By her third album, "No Secrets" (1972), Simon had perfected the art of the celebrity kiss-and-tell with what remains one of the great rock singles, the loping "You're So Vain,'' a sly poison-pen letter to a quintessential '70s jet set lothario that had
America playing a guessing game with Simon's love life. Was it about Warren Beatty? Or Mick Jagger, who boosts the song into surreal overdrive with his rakish, self-adoring guest vocals?
If you've got it, flaunt it, and Simon had it; for her album covers, she posed spread-legged in a diaphanous skirt, braless in a tight jersey, on her knees in a black slip two sizes too small (sorry, Madonna). She wasn't shy about forging into the dubious area of licensing tunes to TV commercials, either; "Anticipation" became a ketchup ad, "Haven't Got Time for the Pain" sold headache tablets. She was also one of the first rock performers to crack the snooty world of movie theme songs, a move that yielded suitable Hollywood dreck like "Nobody Does It Better" from "The Spy Who Loved Me," "Coming Around Again" from "Heartburn" and the overwrought 1989 Oscar-winner "Let the River Run," from "Working Girl" (all collected on "Clouds in My Coffee").
Simon's singing and writing talents may have elicited some of the nastiest reviews in the history of rock criticism but she appears to have gotten the last laugh; her influence can be heard today all over alternative radio. What's Alanis Morissette's calculatedly titillating "You Oughta Know" but a '90s version of "You're So Vain" (albeit without the melody and Mick)? Lisa Loeb's yakkety relationship songs would fit comfortably on "No Secrets" and "Hotcakes." Tori Amos, with her flamboyant eroticism, Sheryl Crow, with her faux-rock chops, Natalie Merchant, with her foggy timbre and expressionistic writing style (you can turn any Simon song into a Merchant song by singing it the Merchant way; try it, it's fun!) -- they're all daughters of Carly.
Maybe Simon's signature qualities -- wallowing, whining, studied naughtiness, the overriding notion that all you have to do to be an artist is let it all hang out -- aren't the qualities we'd prefer to acknowledge in ourselves. But these are qualities that carry a strangely familiar allure. Narcissistic, mother-fixated, moony Carly is your inner teenager coming around again, and all she wants is to be loved.
Carlyphobes and -philes, it's time for you to kiss and tell. Go to Table Talk. and click on the Music category to join the discussion. Remember to register first if you haven't already done so.
