Only part of Carly Simon's 'You're So Vain' is about Warren Beatty

Yes, Carly Simon's 1972 hit "You're So Vain" is about actor Warren Beatty, Simon admits in a new autobiography, Boys in the Trees. But only the second verse ("You had me several years ago when I was still quite naïve/Well you said that we made such a pretty pair/And that you would never leave..."). There are three verses to the song, so who are the other two guys? She won't say. Why not? "I haven't told either of them that it's about them, so it would be too much of a shock, too much of a cold, calculated thing to put it in the book without them knowing," Simon told USA Today.

That means that Beatty has known for years that the song is, in fact, at least partly about him. ("Warren thinks the whole thing is about him!" she told People.) As for the guy who wore an apricot scarf and a "hat strategically dipped below one eye," or the fellow who flew his Lear jet to watch an eclipse in Nova Scotia and dallied around with "the wife of a close friend," well, before Simon's marriage to James Taylor (the focus of the book) in 1972 she was linked to a pretty famous roster of men, including Jack Nicholson, Kris Kristofferson, Cat Stevens, and Mick Jagger, who sings backup on "You're So Vain." You can try to figure out if any of them fit the bill for verse one or two in the video below. Peter Weber

YouTube

Watch On

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up