Once Upon a Time in the Top Spot: Carly Simon, “You’re So Vain”

42 years ago today, the top spot of the Billboard Hot 100 was held by a single that, even now, continues to keep listeners asking, “Yes, but…who’s so vain?”

When Carly Simon released her ironically titled No Secrets album in 1972, she’d already begun to strut her stuff on the charts: her self-titled debut had earned her a top-10 single with “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be,” and the title track of her sophomore effort, Anticipation, hit #13 on the Hot 100 and #3 on the Adult Contemporary chart. The sassiness of “You’re So Vain,” however, helped take Simon to the next level, thanks to the song’s lyrics, which left everyone guessing about whom she was singing.

If you were thinking about heading over to the “You’re So Vain” page on Simon's official website, which is filled with comments she’s made about the song in various interviews over the years, in hopes of finding further insight, don’t expect to get anything out of the experience other than a headache.

It’s definitely not about James Taylor or David Geffen, we know that much. We don’t know if it’s about Warren Beatty, though, because although an 1989 interview refers to Simon having acknowledged that it’s a little about him, there’s a 2000 interview where she says it isn’t. At one point she said it was a composite of three men, but then in 2004 she referred to “the name of the person,” implying that it was about an individual, and – between interviews on CNN and Regis & Kelly – she revealed that this person’s name has an “A,” an “E,” and an “R” in it, which keeps the song’s background singer, Mick Jagger, steadfastly in the mix of possible candidates, along with the aforementioned Mr. Beatty and…Mark Felt? Well, yeah, Simon did tell USA Today that the song was about the former FBI official who identified himself as having been Deep Throat, but we’re pretty sure she was kidding.

Then again, who knows when Carly Simon is kidding? She’s spent the last four decades either grinning like the Cheshire Cat or offering an enigmatic smile like the Mona Lisa, but the end result is still a limited amount of concrete information about who was so damned vain. And don’t count on it getting any better: in that USA Today interview, Simon also indicated that she didn’t see why she’d ever reveal the identity of the song’s subject(s), asking, “What would it advance?”

Well, it might not advance anything, but it’d sure satisfy a lot of people’s curiosity.