Monday, March 1, 2010

Who's so vain?

A recent blurb that I found via Yahoo! news (click here to see it, but do it quick, as these blurbs time out rather soon) says that Carly Simon has rebuffed speculation about who is the referent for her famous song, "You're so vain."

The song, for the uninitiated, has the following catchy refrain:
You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you
The rest of the song lyrics go on to talk about the narrator's experience with someone who (presumably) jilted her somehow. For example:
You had me several years ago
When I was quite naive
You said we made such a pretty pair
And that you would never leave
Well, you gave away the things you loved
And one of them was me
And people obsess over who the song was "about."

Doesn't it occur to anyone that the song is actually about the narrator (or perhaps about Simon, assuming she's the narrator)? My take is, the person the song is addressed to is "so vain" that he thinks the song is about him when in fact it's really about her and her experiences with him.

And yet people still obsess about it.

UPDATE 3-21-10: I've updated the title of this post. It was originally "whose so vain." Ack! grumble, grumble.

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