This review was originally published before Simon revealed her Parkinson’s diagnosis
As unlikely as it sounds, Carly Simon’s first paid gig was singing jingles for her uncle’s company: one of the pre-eminent singer-songwriters of a generation not short on pre-eminent singer-songwriters cutting her teeth on adverts for cold cream, household mops and local banks. Fast forward a few years and she’s winning her first Grammy for Best New Artist with a debut single, “That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be”, which dared to question the preferred currency of popular music: love and romance. Jac Holzman, initially her sole cheerleader at Elektra Records, was vindicated: Simon staked her place in the slipstream, but not the shadow, of Carole King and Joni Mitchell, her seductive alto honey-dripping lyrical scepticism, wit, rapture and realism across a succession of hit albums.
Decades before Taylor and Olivia diarised their affairs, Simon was piquing interest with the veiled subject of her scorn on “You’re So Vain”, one of the all-time great diss tracks (she later confirmed Warren Beatty as the inspiration for the second verse). Swift declared it her favourite song and invited Simon onstage to perform it with her in 2013. Only last year, Simon teamed up with Alanis Morissette to record a new version of her 1986 hit “Coming Around Again”, another nugget of romantic ambivalence. Tori Amos, Natalie Maines and Carly Rae Jepsen have all cited her as an influence, while Thom Yorke has described her luxurious Bond theme, “Nobody Does It Better”, regularly covered by Radiohead in the ’90s, as the sexiest song ever written.
Swift captured her appeal judiciously, saying “there’s nothing more attractive than someone who seems to live effortlessly”. Simon is indeed the epitome of natural glamour but “seems” is the operative word. She has suffered a childhood stammer, dyslexia, paralyzing stage fright and the loss of many family members to cancer. Most recently she was unable to attend her 2022 induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame following the death of her older sisters, Joanne and Lucy, within a day of each other.
Now aged 83, she keeps friends and family close on Comes In Waves, her first album of new music in 18 years which was recorded at her Martha’s Vineyard home with contributions from Ben and Sally Taylor, her children with first husband James Taylor. The album is dedicated to Fugees producer John Forté, who played on the album and died earlier this year.
Forté considered Simon his “spiritual godmother” and she initially presents as the voice of experience on “Howl”, co-written a decade ago with another longterm associate, David Spencer. This missive to a “dear extremely forlorn friend” provides sanguine yet straight-talking counsel on romantic rocky patches. She shakes it out on the cathartic pop chorus, with swirling strings enforcing the elemental advice to “howl like the wind, roar like the river”.
She trains the lens on herself on the short and bittersweet “Maybe I Never Loved You”, which looks back in languor at a longterm relationship, ending on a note of non-resolution. Here, as elsewhere, the clarity, strength and sensitivity of her voice is well matched to the light sophistication of the sentiments. But Simon is determined to have fun as well. “Peaches” is her mischievous musing on tasty/fun/comely stuff that she just can’t get behind, layering her voice over drum machine and ’80s keyboards as if she is in conversation with versions of herself.
Family figures big. “Mother Of Pearl” is a wise, lustrous ode to Sally’s fortitude (“I can see you at seven, a child of divorce… it was your job and Ben’s to drown out all the noise”). She resurrects nostalgic piano ballad “The Father Daughter Dance”, originally written with playwright Ernest Thompson and composer Joe Deleault for the stage production of On Golden Pond, reflecting on a time before complicated relationships and degenerative illnesses. And she honours her Vineyard family by recording “Four In The Morning”, a song co-written by John Belushi’s widow Judy, who passed away in 2024 but whose voice is preserved here, as this ode to a woman walking out on a marriage descends into a carefree celebration of their friendship.
The oldest song in the collection is “Share The End”, co-written for her second album Anticipation with journalist, screenwriter and lyricist Jacob Brackman and reworked here by its original producer, Yardbirds bassist Paul Samwell-Smith. Its symphonic pop ambition still holds up and, 55 years on, its perspective on a world in social, political and democratic freefall is impressively prescient, with Simon mining raw, rasping passion as she pleads for more time to address the coming calamity.
How to follow this? With the best of her new songs, “Do It Anyway”, a suitably timeless pop ballad which dissolves the years with a giggly outtake coda featuring Brackman and his late wife Mindy Jostyn and brings that wave of lyrical reassurance in the face of turbulence back in to shore.