Yalum85's Full Review: The Bedroom Tapes by Carly Simon
Carly Simon was diagnosed with breast cancer in October 1997. She had just released Film Noir, a collection of old movie music that contained only one song of Carly’s creation, and even that was a collaboration with someone else (see my review of Film Noir). Carly underwent a radical mastectomy, six months of chemotherapy, and a long bout of clinical depression. Long prior to her diagnosis, she experienced writer’s block about which she wrote in a breakthrough song, “I flirt with the notion of no more songs . . . ” ("In Honor of You [George]", the last track on The Bedroom Tapes). It was hearing a jukebox in a bar play “Embraceable You” by George & Ira Gershwin that inspired her to write again. The rest of the story is touchingly recounted in “In Honor of You (George).”
The CD gets its name from the location of its production. Carly turned her daughter Sally’s old bedroom into a recording studio and cut the tracks right there with no producer. How fitting for such a personal, self-disclosing album.
If I ever get to converse with Ms. Simon someday, one of my questions will certainly be, “When you write your music and lyrics, do you intend your audience to listen repeatedly before the music speaks to them?” That’s what happens for me. It takes time before I connect with Carly’s music, but then it becomes a part of me. When I bought Letters Never Sent, I almost returned it after two days, but it is now one of my favorite albums. Knowing this, I let The Bedroom Tapes wash over me until I could hear Carly speaking to me. And speak she does!
I see four separate facets to The Bedroom Tapes:
- Music
- Poetry
- Production
- Carly
The Music
Despite my great admiration for Carly Simon’s work, I find the quality of the music in this collection to be its least appealing factor. Even with the understanding that much of the work is free-flowing, introspective reflection, I found a few places that seemed simply like recitatives in an opera or oratorio (the connecting text set to simple, almost spoken melodies). Other melodic progressions were downright predictable (or could it be that I’m just so familiar with Carly’s style?). Regardless of my initial reaction to the music, the tunes still have a basic appeal after becoming familiar so that you find them running through your head all day long, especially songs like “Actress” and “Cross the River”.
The Poetry
This is where The Bedroom Tapes shines for me! We have always appreciated the images Carly’s lyrics evoke for us (e.g., “Your hat strategically dipped below one eye / Your scarf, it was apricot / You had one eye in the mirror as / You watched yourself gavotte”). We not only have some memorable visual images implanted in our brains with The Bedroom Tapes, but we get glimpses into Carly’s inner psyche. And what startling images some of these are—startling, not because they’re so different from ours, but because of the personal self-disclosure.
In “Scar”, we see “a gray day in February / Some flecks of white / But mostly brown,” and Carly unashamedly allows us, without maudlin sentimentality, a personal glimpse of the scar left by her mastectomy, “It’s after the knives and the sutures and needles / I’m left with an arrow that points at my heart.” How many of us wouldn’t hold tightly such a painful reminder? Carly courageously faces the facts head on, and by doing so, heals herself and imparts some of that courage to each of us. Each chorus of “Scar” ends with, “Lead with your spirit and follow, follow your scar.”
We learn (seemingly first-hand) what it’s like to suffer severe depression in “I Forget”, but our emotions are never manipulated by cheap emotionality. How tempting it would be to set lyrics about depression to sad, blue music, but I doubt the temptation ever even touched Carly. Professional therapists will recognize the truth in these lyrics. Carly’s song is not depressing to us; rather, we develop empathy and the beginnings of understanding. She said in an interview that she didn’t even realize it was depression she was suffering. “I hope that people, if they listen to the song and recognize themselves, will get treatment.”
I was disturbed by one song until I understood what it was. Each of us doubt ourselves sometimes and experience a sense of paranoia, wondering what our friends really think and say about us. In “We Your Dearest Friends”, Carly takes us straight into her paranoia (and however much it’s embellished beyond autobiography takes away nothing from the lesson it teaches). The lyrics are the words someone hears their friends utter in their fantasies. These are very jarring sentiments if you think them to be directed at someone else. When you realize these are fantasy, you almost laugh at how silly our fantasies can be, but you also contemplate how/why our most hurtful words are aimed at our own selves! How intelligent, poetic, and apropos (and therapeutic) for Carly to sing the lyrics in her own voice without making them a simile with a preface like, “I imagine them saying . . .”
THIS CD IS NOT ALL SO DEEP! Although there is enough depth in this work to keep your mind busy for a long time, there is a lot of pure fun, too! “Big Dumb Guy” is a romp about “techies” and chat rooms and the whole cyber world of flirting. There’s a priceless parody called, “Actress” that pokes fun at the narcissistic, fantasy world of celebrities.
Before leaving Carly’s poetry, I’m compelled to share a couple of my favorite lines in this collection. In talking with a friend of mine who is fully engulfed in the throes of infatuation, I shared with him these lines from “Our Affair” asking if it wouldn’t make sense to hear these lines from the woman who has slain him: “Don’t you feel like you’re coming down / With something, some great fancy flu / Don’t you feel like you’re coming down with me / And it doesn’t get sicker than you.” In “Actress”, the speaker so vainly (self-acceptingly?) quips, “I may not be that pretty now / But who’s the referee? / Standards of beauty / Will be redefined because of me.” And finally, a classic Carly word picture from “I’m Really The Kind”: “ . . . tantrums like silver slanting rain.”
The Production
Whatever the album lacks in the music category, it more than makes up for it in the production department. We’ve grown accustomed to creative, inventive, and detailed production on Carly’s albums recently, and we’re not disappointed here! The use of effective instruments, arrangement of background vocals and harmony, and the application of percussion are just some of the magic woven into these tracks. The most effective production technique is on “We Your Dearest Friends where there’s a high, haunting background vocal of Carly’s own voice. So fitting here because it’s, after all, one’s own voice that does the haunting in paranoia. Another impressive production technique is the driving percussion on “Cross The River” that drives home the feeling of chronically wanting to get somewhere better than where we are.
Carly
There’s no one like Carly! The seeds of my appreciation for her were planted when my older sisters called my mom at work (yardage department at K-Mart) and asked her to bring home an album called No Secrets by Carly Simon. When my mom arrived home, I heard her say, in reference to Carly’s photo on the cover, “Well, I guess she has No Secrets!” (Find the cover if you don’t know what she was referring to, and you’ll understand.) The images of Robin and the Carter Family and Carly & Mick singing about vainness became a part of my growing up. It was the “Boys In The Trees” album when I was in high school (all those hours listening while working on my accounting project) that solidified by love for Carly’s sultry low voice, her subdued-but-intense expression, her dusty high notes, and the detailed images in her lyrics (much of which we realize are understood only by Carly, but they come to have meaning for each of us). Carly Simon is written all over The Bedroom Tapes, and we’re ecstatic that she’s still with us.
Welcome back, Carly! Thank you so much for sharing!
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