I had some dreams. They were clouds in my coffee. Clouds in my coffee and … YOU’RE SO VAIN
I never got what that was supposed to mean. Was this some kind of druggy dope reference? Knowing that the song was supposedly aimed at Mick Jagger does nothing to enlighten me about those coffee cloud dreams.
Y’know, a lot of songs in the late 60s and early 70s had obscure lyrics. Guess you had to be there…
Wait a second … it wasn’t “Clowns in my coffee,” was it? That would make about as much sense. No, guess not. All right, send in the clouds…
I always thought it was “clowns in my coffee”, but that’s only because I think that’s much funnier than clouds. I don’t know what it actually is, though.
You’re right … you had to be there. I just pictured Carly stoned. And acid tripping at the same time. She has a cup of coffee in front of her. She pours in a little cream. She stares intently through widely dilated pupils as the cream makes ghostly pale billows in the dark clear coffee, swirling in swiftly shifting chaotic shapes, rising like cumulus thunderheads before a summer storm.
Oh wowww, maaannnnn… Oh woooowwwwwww…
She is profoundly impressed. Thinks, This is too freaky cool, man. I gotta put this in a song…
You aren’t too far off there, actually. Like many writers and songwriters, Carly Simon jots down ideas/lyrics that come to her during the course of everyday life, and then consults her notes when she’s working on songs. IIRC, the “clouds in my coffee” bit came to her while on an airplane (clouds outside the plane reflected in her coffee cup) and only later did she work into a song – at which point it took on the meaning she explains in the quotation you gave us (though not very coherently there): I had some dreams for my life and my romance, but like clouds in a coffee cup (reflected or cream-billows) they only obscured the truth that was waiting for me there at the bottom/end.
So yeah, it was one of those “wow, that’s a cool turn of phrase, should use it in a song”, though I can’t vouch for the acid trip. I also cannot provide a reference for this info right now, but I’d be happy to track it down if you really need to know.
By the way, Carly has never said who the subject of the song is. Mick Jagger sings back-up vocals because he happened to be in the recording studio down the hall at the time, and when invited said, “Sure, what the heck?”
The following is an excerpt from an interview with Carly Simon, conducted by Steve Morse of the Boston Globe and included in the booklet/notes for Carly’s 3-CD collection Clouds in My Coffee 1965-1995:
Other lyrics in that song were gathered in the same way. In this same interview, she says that the man in the song is a composite, but “Warren [Beatty] loves that people think it’s about him.”
I’ve always heard that the man in the song is James Taylor. The story goes that after they divorced she made the talk show circuits complaining about how he didn’t want her to have a career and was jealous of her talents, and that she wrote the song once they divorced to express her frustrations with him. Don’t know how true it is or not, just what I’ve heard for as long as I can remember.
> I’ve always heard that the man in the song is James
> Taylor.
It’s useful to check if the dates of some explanation fit before posting. The song “You’re So Vain” came out in 1972. Simon married Taylor in late 1972, and the marriage broke up in 1981. So this story claims that the song was inspired by the break-up of a marriage that hadn’t even started yet when it was written.
I prefer to think it’s Warren Beatty because I think he’s icky. I can just see him walking into a party like he’s walking on to a yacht… He’s definitely so vain!
Hey, I made no claims that it was true, just what I’d been told by lots of people over the years. Besides, why should we let anything like facts ruin a good story ;)?
The lyric, “you walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht”, was yet another inspired by a totally innocent bystander in an unrelated situation. She wrote this idea down and used it later when writing “You’re so Vain”. Carly says this in the aforementioned interview.
That’s not to say it couldn’t refer to Warren Beatty. The point is that we have to be careful about applying her lyrics too literally to any one person. It’s an idea, a picture that fits the song and the sense she was trying to convey; she wasn’t painting an exact portrait of one specific person.
I mean, this is why I’ve always loved that song; it’s so ironic. “You’re so vain – you prob’ly think this song is about you, don’t you?” And is it?
How do you know this? It may well be about one specific person. The exact words she used in the song may be from other sources, but the song itself could be about one specific person.
Green Bean, I “know” this because in the Steve Morse interview I quoted earlier, Carly Simon herself says that the person in the song is a composite picture of different men, not the image of one man in particular. Straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
'S’alright, Green Bean… my statement of course rests on the assumption that Carly is telling the truth about the song, that she did not decide to keep the song’s target a secret once she realized the fervor a little mystery would bring to it!
That’s why I wrote it as “know”, since I am only going on her word.
I also cannot provide a reference for this info right now, but I’d be happy to track it down if you really need to know.