Carly Simon is finally pulling the lid off of one of pop music’s longest-running mysteries, opening up about the subject of her classic 1972 song You’re So Vain. The singer says that the second verse of the hit is about famed actor/director Warren Beatty, with two other mystery men inspiring the song’s other verses, according to a recent interview with People.
Simon and Beatty allegedly had a fling a few years before the song was written, inspiring her to pen the lyrics, “You had me several years ago when I was still quite naive/Well you said that we made such a pretty pair/ And that you would never leave/But you gave away the things you loved and one of them was me/I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee.”
As far as the other two people with verses written in their image, Simon said she wouldn’t reveal their names until they suspected it was about them, saying, “Probably, if we were sitting over at dinner and I said ‘Remember that time you walked into the party and…’. I don’t know if I’ll do it. I never thought I would admit that it was more than one person.”
The 70-year-old songwriter is preparing to release her memoirs, an upcoming autobiography she has titled Boys in the Trees, which likely contains more information surrounding the recording and original performances of the song, as well as the emotions that caused her to pen it in the first place.
Rumored contenders for the other two men You’re So Vain centers around include Mick Jagger, and Simon’s ex-husband James Taylor.
But, Simon says, Beatty, in a somewhat hilarious bit of irony — and even despite her going public about the fact that the track is about three people — still, “thinks the whole thing is about him.”
