Let’s Ketchup With Carly Simon and ‘Anticipation’
‘200 Greatest 70s Rock Songs’ Book Excerpt
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“Anticipation” was written by Carly Simon and became the title song of her 1971 LP. “I remember when I was writing it, I was in a very nervous state,” Simon told NPR. “I was sitting on the edge of my bed and I was waiting for a gentleman caller, who was then called Cat Stevens, and I was opening the show for him.
“And we began to be friends outside the world of show business. And I was so nervous about his arriving at the door that I wasn’t living in the moment. And so, I wrote the song called ‘Anticipation,’ which is about the fact that anticipation makes you late, it keeps you waiting.”
“Anticipation” was a №13 hit in 1972. The song received renewed exposure in commercials for Heinz ketchup in the 1970s and ’80s. In 2009 Simon released Never Been Gone, an album with new versions of her past hits that included “Anticipation.”
“‘Anticipation’ is very different in tone because the first version I did was very ‘rah-rah,’ you’d sing it around the campus after the college football team had won the game,” Simon explained in the Huffington Post.
“Especially on ‘these are the good old days . . . wow, we won!’ When I sing ‘These are the good old days’ on this version of ‘Anticipation,’ all the instruments stop except for my lone guitar that’s just very slowly strumming ‘These are the good old days.’
“The first couple of times I sang it live, I just cried. It made me think that not only was the hourglass tipped over on its other side, but there was more sand at the bottom of the hourglass than the top; that there aren’t many more chances to make mistakes in love.
“When you find love, it’s just so much more precious now at this age. It feels like you don’t flirt around with it. It’s not that it’s heavy and serious, it should never be that, but every second that I’m in love — and I happen to be in love as we speak now — really fills me with all the things that this life was intended to do. Just as I look out at every new spring, it’s almost too much for me to take. It’s those darling buds of May, it just fills me to the brim.”
Frank Mastropolo is the author of 200 Greatest 70s Rock Songs and 200 Greatest 60s Rock Songs.
