I want to marry you. We’ll marry.
mmm
Yes, for the rhyme. As gavotte is so obscure Carly Simon must have worked her way through a great number of more well-known dances before she got to one with a worthwhile rhyme. I expect after the Chicken and the Mashed Potato she just gave up.
If she’d said “You just waltzed in”, I wouldn’t have taken it to mean that he was actually dancing.
And it wasn’t like she invented the phrase. I see a reference to the phrase “gavotting about” from 1935.
Funny, all the yankees I knew thought she was singing “cavort.”
Which reminds me of a mysterious part of the doe-a-dear song—“Tea, a drink with German bread.”
That’s what I always thought they were singing…
Gavotting … like a boss.
Hmmm… and all this time I thought she was saying “And watched yourself garotte”
I had some dreams, they were clowns in my coffee . . .
A drink with jam and bread is what I heard.
edit: I guess you were maybe joking.
You had me for a minute. It’s clouds. I think I used to hear clowns too. Made as much sense as anything else though. Not sure clouds is any better really.
Cream when poured into coffee can look like clouds…sorta? Kinda?
When I hear “clouds in my coffee” I think of the little wisps of steam that appear on the coffee and vanish almost instantly. Her dreams are as ephemeral as the clouds [on] her coffee.
No idea what she actually meant, but that’s the most sense I can shoehorn into that lyric.
I was six years old when this song came out, and maybe 8 years old when I actually heard it for the first time.
I was pretty sure the song wasn’t about me.
Heck, I’ve been a Carly Simon fan for a long time and I’m somewhat familiar with her music.
I think she used the word “gavotte” because of its obscurity.
She’s a rather eloquent lyricist and likes to write songs that are somewhat different both lyrically and musically.
I always thought it was “And you watched yourself go by”. There you go.
The thing is, she provides some pretty specific clues. If some real guy did indeed do all of those things, owns a Learjet and a horse, flew into a solar eclipse, he at least knows it’s about him for sure.
IIRC, isn’t her explanation that it’s a composite? So as soon as the guy who heard that bit concluded that it’s about him, he would’ve scratched his head and tried in vain to recall the time he used that ‘such a pretty pair’ line on her – and the guy who did recall using that line on her, he’d already (a) concluded that it was him, and (b) struggled to recall when he’d worn an apricot scarf to a party.
(And the guy who rocked that scarf – yeah, he’d already concluded it was him, and then said to himself hang on; when did I say “pretty pair” to her?)
That’s what thought. Then you stir your coffee and the clouds become like an overcast sky.
I think she was referring to an even more ephemeral item than that.
So it was more than just a vanishing thing, it was referring to something that was just a reflexion, less tangible than a dream.
She did an impressive job shoehorning “strategically” into that line. Not an easy word to fit to any meter.