CARLY

Recently, at dinner with our nephew Daren and his family, Daren's girlfriend showed us pictures of her family and one of her daughters is named Carly.  I said that I loved the name because we love Carly Simon and she said she'd named her for Carly.  Naturally, I began singing parts of You're So Vain:

"You had one eye in the mirror
As you watched yourself gavotte."

I exclaimed, "Only Carly would rhyme apricot with gavotte."  Daren's daughter Emily chimed in with, "And YACHT"  I asked if they knew the definition of gavotte:

"a medium paced French dance, popular in the eighteenth century, marked by raising, rather than sliding the foot."

Later that evening I was telling my brother about the conversation.  He asked, "Don't you remember that's a famous MONDEGREEN because a lot of people thought Carly sang 'As you watched yourself go by it' rather than gavotte?"

There has been much speculation that You're So Vain was written about Warren Beatty or Mick Jagger, but Carly always refused to divulge the information.  At a charity auction, Dick Ebersol paid $50,000 for Carly to whisper in his ear the identity of the the subject of the song, with the proviso that he would not reveal it.  Ebersol never revealed the name.

I think that Jagger is more likely to gavotte!