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Carly Simon?s unquestionably best album, 'No Secrets', was also her commercial breakthrough. It topped the Billboard charts for over five weeks, thus quickly gaining gold status, as did the single release of 'You?re So Vain'. This song determined the album?s flippant tone, with it's sexually unashamed autobiography ('You had me several years ago/When I was still quite naïve') and it's observations on the lifestyle of the jet set. But Simon?s sincerity also meant that her lyricism was double-edged. Now that she thinks she has found true love, she expresses her joy over her relationship to James Taylor with 'The Right Thing To Do', another top ten hit. On the other hand she was just as willing to recognize her own mistakes and regretted pointing her finger at other people. It was not just Simon?s frankness that made the album a success, but also Richard Perry?s simple, elegant pop-rock production, which lent Simon?s music a vitality it never known before. Perry was mindful in particular of Simon?s vocals, making them more perceptive and stirring than in her other productions. And of course her fellow musicians, such as Paul and Linda McCartney, Mick Jagger, Klaus Voormann, Lowell George, Bobby Keys, Jim Keltner as well as her ex-husband James Taylor all contributed to the success of the album, which was awarded official platinum status by the Recording Industry Association of America.
This is not to say that the cover of "No Secrets" isn't plenty interesting. There are certainly a couple items on it which are easy on a guy's eyes, like Carly's sensuous upper and lower lips, plus those millions of gorgeous teeth. But to loosely paraphrase the great Bo Diddley, it's what's inside that counts, and what's inside is superlative. Not one subpar track.Let's begin with the big smash, "You're so Vain." When my grandchildren have grandchildren, they'll be still debating who this song was about in chat rooms, dorm rooms, and taverns across America (which I am confident will be greater then ever). You'd think after almost 40 years I'd be tired of this song, but it's held my interest as much as it did when it first was released, as much as it did on a frigid Chicago night in January, 1973, when all five Chicago rock stations played it -- simultaneously.But there is far more to this album than the monster hit. "The Carter Family," which is not about our 39th President, tells the story about how one feels a great loss after someone who one takes for granted moves on. "His Friends are Always Fond of Robin" is a great song about unrequited love. There are many Carly Simon songs which move me almost to tears; this is one of them, and one which makes it difficult for me to continue driving safely when it's playing, so if you are in New Jersey, and see a charcoal 2011 BMW 535 pulled over to the side of the road, it's probably not because of engine trouble or being out of gas. Note that forty years ago I was less than fond of this cut. Things have changed, and it's not the song. Carly gets better and better when you put a few miles on your internal odometer.Another track which elicits much the same reaction is "Embrace Me, You Child," which is about Carly's somewhat unrequited love for her father, Simon & Schuster co-founder Dick Simon, whom she never really got to come to terms with (he passed away much too young in 1960, when Carly was her mid-teens, and had been seriously ill for several years before that).Then there is "Night Owl" on which Carly really rocks. So if some of the previous cuts make my heart heavy, I can and do use the hated-by-many BMW iDrive knob to switch to that cut, my spirits instantly brighten, and the hammer goes down."No Secrets" was Carly's best-selling album. I don't consider it quite her finest body of work (I am particularly fond of "Hello Big Man" and "Letters Never Sent"), but Sandy Koufax had three seasons in which he won 25 or more games, going 25-5 in 1963, 26-7 in 1965, and 27-8 in 1966, all with a team with no hitting to speak of. This is comparable to Koufax's 1963 season, the one where the Dodgers swept the Yankees and the Great Mickey Mantle in the World Series. Not too shabby.
