After 44 years, Carly Simon has finally given up one of pop music's longest-running secrets.
Well, kind of.
In a story posted on People magazine's website on Wednesday, the songstress divulged that the song "You're So Vain" is about Warren Beatty. At least, the second verse is.
"I have confirmed that the second verse is Warren," Simon told People in an interview for her upcoming memoir "Boys in the Trees." "Warren thinks the whole thing is about him."
The Warren Beatty verse goes: "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 / But you gave away the things you loved and one of them was me / I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee / Clouds in my coffee."
"For years Simon has been teasing the public with clues about the song's subject, including in 2004 when she told Regis Philbin that the man's name contained the letters
A, E, and R," Billboard's Jessie Katz wrote. "That left Beatty, but also some of Simon's other exes like Mick Jagger and James Taylor, to whom she was married for 11 years."
Simon said the song is also about two other people whom she declined to name.
"You're So Vain" stayed in the No. 1 spot for three weeks in early 1973, shortly after it was released. Simon, known for writing autobiographical lyrics in her songs, immediately sparked a guessing game of who the song was about.
Simon told People she that she has been surprised by the long-lasting interest in the song's lyrics after all of these years.
"Why do they want to know?" she said. "It's so crazy."
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