Happy Birthday Carly Simon: New Music; Human and Sexual Rights Advocacy

June 25, 2009

Happy Birthday Carly! Musician, composer, author, advocate, mom Carly Simon turned 64 today. For her birthday, Carly said on her website and blog that she spoke with Barbara Dacey at WMVY radio and planned to relax at home for the rest of the day. On the show, Carly announced that she will release a new album this fall and played a rough demo of one of the songs. The whole interview can be heard here:

Carly explains current album, This Kind of Love, on her website, www.carlysimon.com: “Inspired by and subtly infused with the rhythms of Brazilian music, This Kind of Love explores a wide swath of emotion-romance, reflection, melancholy, anger and humor. It's at once one of Simon's most personal albums as well as one of her most stylistically diverse outings.”

The entire album is very good. “Island,” “Sangre Dolce” and “People Say A Lot” are my favorites. “Island” is a very peaceful-sounding song with a message about invading privacy, “Sangre Dolce” is about a mother who moves away from her children to make money in a new country as an a pair, and “People Say A Lot” is an interesting rap-like song about a deceptive personal assistant.

Carly also has a new song on the album, Listen, which will be available to buy June 23. It’s an album of 15 original songs written by children who stutter that are performed by famous musicians including: Carly Simon; Daryl Hall and John Oates; John Forte; Duncan Shiek. Simon wrote an article titled “How I Found My Voice” on June 7, 2009 in The Daily Beast explaining that she was a stutterer in the past and still is at times.

I am including the following information because it shows how even a person who’s thought of as an intelligent person, such as James Taylor, can be ignorant when it comes to sexual information. On June 19, 2008, Carly and her son Ben Taylor interviewed with Howard Stern. Speaking about Ben’s dad, her ex-husband James Taylor, Simon said she has not spoken to James in over 20 years and thinks that Taylor thinks she is a lesbian, and even though it is not completely true, it piqued her interest at one time.

"Have I made love to a woman? No," said Simon. "Now, I have been 'come on' to, but I was too uptight. But I wish that I had. I think that I’m too old for that [now]. I have a fantastic boyfriend now who’s almost a woman."

Simon said that she feels that Taylor's ex-wife and current wife were threatened by her, and it contributes to the strain in their relationship (transworldnews.com).

Carly and James Taylor’s son, Ben Taylor is currently on tour in Europe with John Forte. I’ll have to check out Ben’s newest album.

In an interview with Gregg Shapiro of the San Francisco publication, Bay Area Reporter on May 1, 2008, Carly said she would like to help with human rights and sexual rights advocacy.

Shapiro asked, “I'm wondering if Cyndi [Lauper] called you and asked you to be a part of the True Colors tour, might you get involved?”

Simon said, “Well, the part that I could be involved in is the gay and lesbian part. The part that would be hard for me is to commit to a tour because I'm not very comfortable being onstage. But the part that would be easiest for me would be singing on behalf of all of us. I don't consider myself to be not gay.”

“Wow! Well, it's great to have you as part of the family,” said Shapiro.

Carly added, “Thank you! I mean, I've enlarged all of my possibilities. There are a lot of extremely personal stories to tell about that, but we won't go into that right now. Let's just say that it just depends upon who I'm with.”

Check out Carly’s well-crafted latest album, This Kind of Love, and look out for Carly’s new album in a couple of months.