One of popular music's most esteemed vocalists and songwriters, Carly Simon
delivers the highly anticipated This Kind of Love, her first album of all-original
music in eight years and her debut recording for Hear Music. On the label
she joins an equally elite roster of artists, including Paul McCartney,
Joni Mitchell and James Taylor. The CD-intimate, sexy, impassioned, joyful-features
10 new songs written or co-written by Carly, one song each from her children,
Ben Taylor and Sally Taylor, and a samba by Webb.
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, with songs that include
the gently swaying, samba-washed title track, the gorgeously melodic “In
My Dreams,” the r&b-styled “So Many People to Love”
and the percussively funky “People Say A Lot”-a song that traverses
expansive musical territory, including an orchestral interlude that leads
to a snippet of dialogue from the classic 1950 film All About Eve, directed
by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and starring Bette Davis, Anne Baxter and George
Sanders.
After two well-received albums of standards this decade (2005's Moonlight
Serenade with classic tunes and 2006's lullaby-oriented Into White with
new standards in the mix), Simon was eager to return to singing her own
compositions rather than be viewed as an artist slotted into the “heritage”
category. “I was working on plenty of new songs during this period,”
she says. “I had a huge collection of bits and pieces of songs when
I was approached by Hear Music. The label requested originals, so I was
thrilled.”
In the liner notes to This Kind of Love, Simon reflects on the rich array
of music in her house when she was growing up, noting that “there
was always a celebration of Brazilian music in our music bin…[with]
recordings by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Luiz Bonfa, Maria Toledo and Laurindo
Almeida.” She also writes that discovering the beauty and melodic
longing of the classic 1959 film Black Orpheus and its Jobim-Bonfa score
was a life-changing experience that made her realize “that music
could evoke passion and tragedy more than painting or dancing or any other
form of art.”
However, Simon notes, it wasn't until her recent discovery of modern-day
Brazilian artists such as Caetano Veloso and Jorge Ben that “you
don't have to be singing bossa nova or samba to get the essence [of Brazilian
music]. There are songs that fit no one rhythm or generic type or song
progression. There is such variation and view to the ears and emotions
of the listener, and it is all there.”
Dedicated to both Art Buchwald and Antonio Carlos Jobim, This Kind of
Love marks the next chapter in Simon's prolific career as a top-drawer
vocalist and songwriter. “Many of these tunes are autobiographical,”
she says. “My songs always come from something that personally happens
to me or that I overhear or that are inspired by a book or film”
Simon adds, “In many [of these] songs, we were led down a garden
path in Rio, and most often we didn't say 'no.'”
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