Rhymin' Simon

Thanks to Thomas for this Marcello-alluding post devoted to Carly Simon's "Why," the best non-hit (domestically, of course) of her career. I'm not as besotted with it as they are. The slightly atonal warble darkened by an almost electronic sheen turned those big seventies hits that Mom loves into scary polyurethane soul (it made perfect sense that she scored a mild comeback in the eighties thanks to songs featured in polyurethane director Mike Nichols' films). The synthetic filigrees of the Chic Organization circa 1981 would seem to fit her as snugly as those Jane Fonda-esque leotards she then sported; but I sense distance not commitment, detachment, not ambivalence. Chic understand enough about their client not to palliate her patrician self-regard. If Diana Ross' hologram soul at least radiated spunk, Simon radiates the dilettantism of a Marin County parvenue. In the days of Spandau Ballet and Flesh + Blood-era Roxy Music, of course I know why "Why" was a bigger hit in England.