Carly Simon once auctioned off the identity of the ‘You’re so Vain’ subject
Although she might not be as prominent as many of her peers in the media today, this does not detract from the fact that Carly Simon ranks amongst the very best songwriters of her generation. Whilst most people remember her for the classic ballad ‘Nobody Does It Better’, from the 1977 James Bond flick The Spy Who Loved Me, which Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager wrote, her oeuvre is much more extensive than that.
‘Anticipation’, ‘The Right Thing To Do’ and ‘You Belong to Me’ are just three of her most lauded cuts. However, it is without argument that her finest opus comes in the form of 1972’s ‘You’re So Vain’. A number one hit, it’s a defiant anthem for everyone that’s ever suffered in a toxic relationship.
An absolute musical masterwork, the song is also steeped in mystery, as the identity of the song’s subject has never been disclosed. The most common candidates are ex-husband James Taylor, David Bowie, Kris Kristofferson, David Cassidy, Cat Stevens, and Mick Jagger. However, over the years, Simon has gradually denied almost all of these.
Then we come to the question of it being Warren Beatty, the famous Hollywood lothario. Back in 2004, Simon teased us all when she told Regis Philbin: “If I tell it, it’s going to come out in dribs and drabs. And I’ve given out two letters already, an ‘A’ and an ‘E’. But I’m going to add one to it. I’m going to add an ‘R’ in honour of you.”
All three letters appear in Warren Beatty’s name, and credence was added to the claim in 2007 when the Dick Tracy auteur said: “Let’s be honest. That song was about me.” This was supported by Simon’s 1983 assertion that Beatty “certainly thought it was about him—he called me and said thanks for the song…”
However, Simon has always understood that the song’s mystery is one of its greatest strengths, and despite it being reported that she has told people ranging from Howard Stern to Taylor Swift the subject’s identity, it has never been made public.
In 2015, when promoting her memoir, Simon drip-fed us some more information and said, “I have confirmed that the second verse is Warren (Beatty)”, adding again that “Warren thinks the whole thing is about him”. “Now, that doesn’t mean that the other two verses aren’t also about Warren,” she then strangely explained to the BBC. “It just means that the second one is.”
Although her 2015 disclosure was peculiar, the most intriguing part of the song’s story came 12 years prior, in 2003. At that point, she was still unyielding about revealing who the song was about, but it was here that she decided to start her long path of drip-feeding fans clues.
In August of that year, the songstress agreed to reveal the identity to the highest bidder of the Martha’s Vineyard Possible Dreams charity auction. The winning bid came as $50,000 from Dick Ebersol, a friend of hers and the president of NBC Sports. Winning the right to know the name, a condition of the prize, was that Ebersol never revealed it to anyone.
However, Ebersol stated that Simon had allowed him to disclose one clue about their name: “Carly told me that I could offer up to the entire world a clue as to what she’ll tell me when we have this night in about two weeks. And the clue is: The letter ‘E’ is in the person’s name.”
