A recurring critical assessment of Carly Simon’s work, perpetuated mainly by male writers, is that she’s a “singles artist”. That’s usually intended either as an open slight or a backhanded compliment – in other words, a slight in drag. Nothing could be further from the truth. Why someone would want to push the falsehood that Simon’s work is disposable upmarket bubblegum remains a mystery. She’s been crafting albums of clever, literate songs that hang together as meaningful bodies of work since 1971. Her 2022 nomination for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – whatever your opinion of that popularity club – is long overdue.
It’s hard to pinpoint a reason – possibly because there are several – that Simon attracts as many writers eager to minimize her as she does ones who lift her up. For Robert Christgau, self-styled ‘Dean’ of music critics, it’s her background of well-heeled bohemia – by that prejudice, he views her as innately and irredeemably complacent. It’s the same reason he finds James Taylor and Harry Chapin untenable. For others, though they might be reluctant to admit it, it’s Simon’s conspicuous glamour. Bobbie Gentry, whose work wasn’t reappraised until 2019, was another to be underestimated because of her physical presentation.
Let’s also not overlook just how many men can only perceive genius in other men. Glance at the covers of the print music monthlies, and you’ll see a ratio that never favors women. Ever. Yes, they’ll let Joni Mitchell into the club. And Rickie Lee Jones is permitted two or three good albums. But, like Carole King with Tapestry, Simon is only allowed No Secrets, as if to suggest it was a fluke. In fact, she’s issued many albums that are its equal. Simon’s songs reveal her as a sharp-witted observer of herself and others, a quirky diarist, a deep feeler, and a shrewd witness of passion, pain, and social/romantic mores. Though she can knock out straightforward rock songs like “Jesse” (from Come Upstairs, 1980), more often she displays a sharply sophisticated use of musical architecture, especially in terms of chords and chord progressions.
Think of the atypical (for pop) progressions that kick in during the plaintive “so don’t mind if I fall apart” post-chorus passage in “Coming Around Again”. Simon equals that musical flair with lyrics that loiter around emotional flashpoints quite fearlessly and never without brains and trenchancy. Not only is she good with words, but her occasional co-writer, Jacob Brackman, a lyricist she has worked with throughout her career, has an extraordinary knack for capturing her voice. As a result, even the songs with words supplied by him sound as if they were written by her. There’s a Carly Simon song for almost every shade of feeling, from despair to jubilation. Quite simply, she is one of pop’s greatest chroniclers of the human heart.
Neither taste nor opinion is not static, so a best album one week is not necessarily a best the next. Personal bias collides with any attempt to be objective, however much someone tries to suspend the former. To celebrate Simon, the auteur, I’ve eliminated her covers albums. If I’d included them, Torch (1981) would be present. I’ve also passed over her Warner Bros. and Epic periods. It pains me not to include the splendid, effervescent pop LP Spoiled Girl or the cross-genre, semi-experimental Hello Big Man. Ask me next week, and they could well appear prominently. But here are what possibly rank as Carly Simon’s ten best LPs – for the moment.
10. Have You Seen Me Lately? (Arista, 1990)
This charming LP was a reunion with British producer Paul Samwell-Smith, who’d worked on Carly Simon’s second album, Anticipation. Also on hand was Frank Filipetti, one of Simon’s most sympathetic collaborators. But for whatever reason, the album didn’t quite replicate the success of 1987’s Coming Around Again. Was it a mistake to issue a live album (Greatest Hits Live, 1988) and a collection of popular standards (My Romance, 1990) in the period between the two?
Could Have You Seen Me Lately? have broken through if it had been able to ride on the renewed momentum from Simon’s 1987 success? Or was it just a little too personal and cultivated to be a blockbuster seller? It had no shortage of sunny, instantly memorable tunes – “Better Not Tell Her”, “Life Is Eternal”, and “Don’t Wrap It Up”. There are also some incisive, happy-sad reflections on reaching the early stages of mid-life, particularly the wry “Happy Birthday”.
9. Hotcakes (Elektra, 1974)
The gold-selling follow-up to No Secrets is infused with a spirit of happiness and domestic contentment. It has an unmistakable flushed-with-success glow. Its least essential track, “Mockingbird”, was the biggest of its two hits. The spiritual empowerment anthem, “Haven’t Got Time For the Pain”, with a glorious Paul Buckmaster arrangement, was the other, better one. Perhaps this album isn’t as hard-hitting as its predecessor, but the songwriting is never less than gripping; the subdued, plaintive “Grownup”, the humorous childhood reminiscence, “Older Sister”, the contemplative “Mind on My Man”, the frolicking “Misfit”. Everything that makes Simon special is here.
8. Boys in the Trees (Elektra, 1978)
Carly Simon’s collaboration with super producer, Arif Mardin, paid off with a hit single, “You Belong to Me”, co-written with Michael McDonald. Boys in the Trees, from which it was plucked, is one of her bestsellers. It’s no wonder that the title track, a perceptive art song exploring the complications of budding sexuality, struck a chord with Tori Amos, who later covered it in concert. “Haunting”, a tremendous pop aria about the concealed romantic obsessions we carry through life, and “In a Small Moment”, a touching folk-soul examination of the psychological toll of lying, lodge instantly in the memory. Simon was in a better voice than ever. There are some treading-water moments – Simon has written better romantic ballads than “You’re the One” and “For Old Time’s Sake” – but the album’s a solid 8/10.
7. Another Passenger (Elektra, 1976)
The vaulting ambition of Carly Simon’s first post-Richard Perry album is admirable. It’s clear that after the sultry domesticity of Hotcakes and Playing Possum, she wanted a new kind of creative stretch. Ted Templeman’s production certainly provided it. Her sixth album’s 13 tracks dabble in soul, folk, boogie-woogie, bossa nova, sultry balladeering, and rock, and there’s a mix of storytelling, autobiography, and semi-autobiography. It’s hard to know which category the startling, sad “In Times When My Head” falls. In this soulful, lushly-arranged ballad, the narrator has committed adultery and is now consumed by a desperate paranoia that her partner will do the same thing. It’s an example of Simon’s very best pop songwriting.
Only on “Darkness ‘Til Dawn” is there excessive instrumental titivation. A year later, Simon would produce a far more effective, piano-only arrangement of this atmospheric song for her friend, Libby Titus. Here, it’s tarted up to its detriment. Another Passenger is an overlooked Carly Simon album – it didn’t have a big hit. Still, it’s an engrossing piece of work and includes the sweeping, orchestrated ballad “Libby”, an enduring fan favorite.
6. Spy (Elektra, 1979)
The less successful but more consistent of the Mardin-produced albums, Spy came with a kind of concept. The cover captured the artist with a “strategically dipped” hat and bore the Anais Nin quotation: “I am an international spy in the house of love.” But lead single, “Vengeance”, underperformed, despite ravishing promotional footage. Consequently, Spy remained an album only listened to by established fans rather than the wider audience necessary for a hit.
That’s a shame because it includes “We’re So Close”, one of Carly Simon’s finest creative triumphs. It’s a torch song for a marriage-in-denial. This heartrending jazz-pop ballad depicts a union slowly drained of the lifeblood of kind words, thoughtful gestures, and everyday tenderness. Simon sings about a man for whom expressions of affection are unnecessary clutter. He is gaslighting her by saying, “the less I convey it, the more I love you.”
In the context of Simon’s marriage, one wonders if this cri de coeur acted as a hand grenade or, perhaps more devastatingly, was met with indifference. Whatever the case, it’s riveting writing with lovely chord progressions and a sax solo that sounds like someone crying at midnight. And in its greatness, it’s not alone; “Just Like You Do”, “Spy”, “Never Been Gone” (one of Simon’s most glistening, straightforward folk songs), “Coming to Get You”, “Love You By Heart” and the jazz-rock experiment, “Memorial Day” are almost its equal. The flatly unimpressive “Pure Sin” is the sole weak link.
5. The Bedroom Tapes (Arista, 2000)
Carly Simon has never blanched at the opportunity to mine art from adversity; The Bedroom Tapes, which she co-produced, was written during and after her recovery from breast cancer. Although its production is not short of dexterous little flourishes, it’s actually the most scaled-back of the Arista albums, sometimes harking back to the Anticipation era. It captures every side of the artist, from the typically Simon-esque intelligent erotica – “Our Affair”, “Big Dumb Guy” – to the poetic making sense of loss and suffering – “Scar”, “I Forget”.
Then there are the witty, whimsical self-portraits, such as “I’m Really the Kind”. Many Carly Simon albums have elegant little dabs of acridity and pithiness, and on this one, they appear in the form of the astringent “We, Your Dearest Friends”. It’s a pity this distinguished album arrived just as Simon’s relationship with Arista was curdling; several critics threw their weight behind it, and it deserved a more prolonged spell in the spotlight. It was reissued sometime later with an additional two tracks. The original version ends with “In Honor of Your, George”, an enthralling, sprawling Gershwin tribute.
4. No Secrets (Elektra, 1972)
There’s a reason this album is so frequently identified as Carly Simon’s best. As well as including “You’re So Vain”, it’s incredibly consistent. Beyond its two hits, it features mature, subtle songwriting, typified by “His Friends Are More Than Robin”, a wistful, yearning character study. Its title track confronts the tension caused when a desire for maturity and openness in love clashes with childlike insecurity and possessiveness. There are some lovely reflections on how adulthood disabuses us of comforting fantasies, a recurring motif of Simon albums – “It Was So Easy Then”, “Embrace Me You Child”. “The Carter Family”, about the grownup realization that we pine for things we once found tiresome, is another high point. Some of Simon’s other albums linger, unfairly, in the shadow of No Secrets, but it’s easy to hear why it casts such a long one.
3. Playing Possum (Elektra, 1975)
A warm, sensual sound-bath, Playing Possum has been cited as the point at which Carly Simon’s work took a turn for the worse. Nonsense. If anything, this is where her three-album collaboration with producer Richard Perry reached its pinnacle. Perhaps its reputation suffers because the hit associated with it is the fun, frivolous “Attitude Dancing”. Simon reportedly wanted the riveting “Slave” to be released instead – it’s the better song but less commercial.
Playing Possum is one of the albums on which Simon’s piano-playing, an under-appreciated part of her early sound, is particularly prominent. There’s also some guest piano from Dr. John. Today, it may be more famous for its sexy cover, but this album is a breezily lustful pleasure. The simmering, jazzy ballad “After the Storm” is one of her all-time best album-openers. The concluding title track, about the post-hippie disillusionment of 1960s idealists, is a fine closer.
2. Letters Never Sent (Arista, 1994)
Carly Simon had a tremendous second act when she moved to Arista in 1986. While it was Coming Around Again that restored her fortunes, that was a half-great album. In its other half, especially on the Bryan Adams track “It Should Have Been Me”, it bore the prints of Clive Davis’s sticky little fingers. It was the follow-ups where Simon bloomed creatively. Letters Never Sent is an outstanding, ambitious, romantic concept album based on a box of unsent missives produced by Simon and Frank Filipetti.
The slick, funky title track sounds like something Ashford & Simpson could have confected, but “Lost in Your Love”, a dreamy, rapturous gem of romantic abandon is pure Simon. And so is the quirkily erotic “The Reason”. Concluding with the folk mysticism of “I’d Rather It Was You”, Letters Never Sent was where Simon’s commercial and anti-commercial instincts came together to splendid effect. It’s her ’90s masterpiece, with sumptuous, no-expense-spared production and arrangements.
1. Anticipation (Elektra, 1971)
No Secrets has surely had more than its fair share of time in pole position. Carly Simon’s second album, Anticipation deserves to take its turn. She has identified it as the album made most according to her wishes, with the least concern for commerciality. Yet it delivered two hits; the enduring sing-a-long title track and the less well-remembered “Legend in Your Own Time”. But the album tracks shine just as much, whether it’s the shimmering bossa nova of “Summer’s Coming Around Again” or the apocalyptic rock theatre of “Share the End”.
“The Garden” is the kind of folk-in-heat that’s always been one of Simon’s strengths. The slightly washed-out cover image of Simon striking a power pose in Regent’s Park (the album was recorded at Trident Studios in London) captures the album’s essence. This is a coming-of-age singer-songwriter LP with considerable bite. It concludes with a fine, highly-charged recording of Kris Kristofferson’s “I’ve Got to Have You”.