Psychedelic Lunch

Welcome to our “Psychedelic Lunch”series where wefind out how deep the rabbit hole really goes and explore music and musicians from the 60’s to today. Enjoy the trip!

“You’re So Vain” – Carly Simon

Who’s it about? Warren Beatty. Sort of.

The person Carly is dinging about has been a mystery for more than 40 years, it was speculated that the subject of this famous song dissing a former lover was actor Warren Beatty, which Carly always denied. Other theories and rumors were that she was singing about Kris Kristofferson, Cat Stevens, Mick Jagger, James Taylor or David Geffen.

Simon has been elusive and changed her story a bit when asked the inevitable question about the song (strange considering the album title). In 1974, she told Modern Hi-Fi and Music: “That song is about a lot of people. I mean I can think of a lot of people. The actual examples that I’ve used in the song are from my imagination, but the stimulus is directly from a couple of different sources. It’s not just about one particular person.”

Carly finally came clean in 2015 and told People magazine that the second verse of the song was about Beatty, but that the first verse was about two other men.