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Coming Around Again | 
 enlarge | Artist: Carly Simon
Label: Arista
Category: Music
Buy New: $11.98
New (39) Used (42) Collectible (1) from $2.36
Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 16063
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 8443
UPC: 078221844321
EAN: 0078221844321
ASIN: B000002VEN
Release Date: October 25, 1990
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Tracks:
| • | Coming Around Again | | • | Give Me All Night | | • | As Time Goes By | | • | Do The Walls Come Down | | • | The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of | | • | It Should Have Been Me | | • | Two Hot Girls (On A Hot Summer Night) | | • | You Have To Hurt | | • | All I Want Is You | | • | Hold What You've Got | | • | Itsy Bitsy Spider |
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| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
 My video says four stars, but I change my mind...has to be five!!!! August 16, 2008
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R180PGNU6G7TVT My name is Jeremy Gloff. I am a musician (check me out on Amazon!) and retro music enthusiast. If you enjoyed this review make sure to check out my Amazon user profile to check out my other reviews. I am always up for making new friends and discussing the music I love!!!
Excellent 'comeback' record July 6, 2008
"Coming Around Again" was Carly's first album for Arista Records and her strongest selling album for at least eight years at the time of its release (1986). Carly invests the songs with passionate vocals and she showed her commercial and artistic chops as a writer by producing a program of insightful and memorable songs. The songs loosely follow the plot line of the movie "Heartburn," for which the song "Coming Around Again" was the theme.
Having heard most of Carly's releases, I believe that this is one of her strongest, most cohesive albums -- and also one of her most accessible. "Coming Around Again" ranks with her best work, including "No Secrets" (1972), "Boys In the Trees" (1978), "Spy" (1979), "Have You Seen Me Lately?" (1990), and "Letters Never Sent" (1994).
The circle of life. March 7, 2008
Carly Simon uses love songs and references to popular movies to teach profound life lessons.
Simon follows the path cut by greats such as King Solomon and the Danish Christian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. Solomon used "The Song of Songs" parable to describe the love between G-d and the Jewish people, comforting and inspiring Jews throughout the centuries. Kierkegaard rightly saw that modern masses are not inspired by overt religiosity but can be moved if messages come cloaked in aesthetic works (works of art). Only gifted artists are capable of this, Kierkegaard noted. Carly Simon manages it with "Coming Around Again."
The 1987 disc's title track was used in the movie "Heartburn," Nora Ephron's thinly disguised account of her failed marriage to Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein. Ephron's script and Simon's song use the setting of a modern marriage to sketch the circle of life. The circular nature of reality is the strongest theme in Jewish rituals dealing with scholarship as well as life, death and mourning (death and mourning being stages on life's way). Wise gentiles have recognized this, too, including Gustav von Schmoller, an eminent German economist and historian who refused to explain phenomena outside of circular causation, and Joseph Schumpeter, a prominent disciple of Schmoller's.
Simon may well be showing us how she was coping with the dissolution of her marriage to James Taylor. Like any great work, the song "Coming Around Again" is enjoyable on many levels. It can be taken as a soundtrack for Jewish spirituality and perseverance, holding out hope for the future redemption -
"I know nothing stays the same
But if you're willing to play the game
It's coming around again."
Simon echoes King Solomon's "Song," crying out to her mate (G-d) amid suffering and jittery loyalty -
"And I believe in love
But what else can I do?
I'm so in love with you (You)."
The final track features bits of the title track mixed with the nursery rhyme "Itsy Bitsy Spider" (movie-goers will recall the poignancy this had in "Heartburn.").
"The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout
Down came the rain and washed the spider out.
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain
And the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again."
The spider is us. The rain represents life's hardships. G-d is the sun. And the spout is Jacob's Ladder, the path of spirituality.
Our job is to develop the instincts of the spider, climbing back regardless of the number of times we're knocked down. As Rabbi Elyah Lopian reinforced in powerful discourses such as "The Healing Power of Torah and The Need to be Persistent," the righteous person is one who falls seven times but continues to rise and fight on.
Some who saw "Heartburn" might be tempted to equate the philandering husband (played by Jack Nicholson) with G-d. But those spidermen and spiderwomen mentally and emotionally equipped to climb the spout know G-d is loyal. The problem is us. We are disloyal thus our suffering (yet suffering is a good teacher). The Book of Job sums it up well - "This is the path you have chosen instead of obedience." Simon registers Jewish acceptance of this when she sings "Don't mind if I fall apart. There's more room in a broken heart."
Humphrey Bogart films are employed in further meditations on "the good life" (the false material-centered one) and spiritual life (the true good life). Being a full-fledged member of American media royalty thanks to her own effort and those of her father Richard (the "Simon" in the Simon & Schuster book publishing house), Carly Simon knows this struggle intimately.
Simon again goes inside contemporary marriage in "The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of." That phrase is lifted from "The Maltese Falcon" (directed by John Huston) and we're reminded how Mary Astor's character lost everything by chasing the material. Simon is giving a pep talk to desperate wives as well as those stuck in a rut with G-d:
"Take a look around now
Change the direction
Adjust the tuning
Try a new translation
Don't look at your man in the same old way
Take a new picture
Just because you don't see shooting stars
Doesn't mean it ain't perfect
Can't you see...
It's the stuff that dreams are made of..."
Between the lines we glimpse that had the woman married according to Biblical protocol (for proper procedure see Genesis 24:67 regarding the union of Isaac and Rebekah) she likely wouldn't be frustrated.
Simon's version of "As Time Goes By" transports us back to the "Casablanca" of Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. We recall Rick's (Bogie's) great act of unselfishness. If we view Simon's "Give Me All Night" as the Jew's relenting desire to be filled with truth and discernment and "Do The Walls Come Down" as lamenting the fall of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jewish people across the planet then "As Time Goes By" can be seen as G-d's response, telling the Jews that I scattered you in order to teach Torah to humanity and gather in converts. A la Bogart, G-d chose loneliness in His house (the Land of Israel) for the greater good. The song holds the promise of reunion that will strengthen the original love -
"And when two lovers woo
They still say I love you
On that you can rely
The world will always welcome lovers
As time goes by."
Whether she knows it or not, Carly Simon has written an anthem for full-time Torah scholars in "Give Me All Night." She employs Jewish imagery (rabbinical literature compares the Jewish people to the moon) and is helping fulfill a prophecy that the songs of the nations and the stadiums of Rome will be used to teach Tanach and Talmud -
"Give me all night
Give me the full moon
And if I can't take the whole of you (You)
Give it to me any way
Give me all night
Till the last star fades
And if you (You...G-d) can't take my heart and soul
Take it from me any way."
The necessity and usefulness of suffering comes up again in "You Have to Hurt." The wisdom comes straight from another Jewish source - Holocaust survivor and logotherapy pioneer Dr. Viktor Frankl (read VF's "Man's Search for Meaning.").
Simon (again through the lens of modern romance):
"You have to hurt - to understand.
You have to get by the best you can
Until you hurt - until you cry
You won't know about love
And the reason you're alive
You have to hurt."
The Jewish relationship with G-d is once more subtext in "All I Want is You." As befits her impressive talent, Simon is playful and serious at the same time.
"So chase me around the room
Make me crazy like the moon
They can never guess
In the silences
All I want is you (You...G-d)
And the sexy hurricane that we share..."
"Coming Around Again" was clearly therapeutic for Simon, encouraging her to overcome relationship and artistic failures and return to live performances and greater creativity. She points to the importance of friendship in dedicating the work to the director of "Heartburn."
"To Mike Nichols. For luring the spider out of the web and over to the spout. This album is dedicated to you, my dear friend."
I'll give her all night....... October 16, 2007
.....anytime. We all know that Carly has had her ups and downs over the years....this 1987 album dates from a time when she was coming up from a down...obviously, she recovered well. Maybe she suffers from some "excessive" arrangements of these songs, but the songs are still great, and the voice was in fabulous shape.
A few cuts deserve special mention...."As Time Goes By" is, of course, a standard. The lyrics are gender-neutral, so a wide variety of singers have sung it; some even have done it well...Carly is as good as any, though the arrangement is not my favorite. The rendition of the kids' classic "Itsy Bitsy Spider" is charming, and "Two Hot Girls" is my personal favorite from the album....if the other girl ["Jenny", whoever that may be] is as hot as Carly, I'd like to meet her. As referred to in my title, "Give Me All Night" is one of Carly's best rock songs.
This is not Carly's best known, or even best, album. Still, it's a great record; Carly's average is far beyond most singers' best ever. Essential for Carly fans [who already have it, anyway], and highly recommended for everyone else.
 Wow ... still great, BUT.... October 15, 2007
I couldn't get enough of this CD when it came out in 1987. It's still an enjoyable listen, but twenty years' hindsight reveals what a leaden touch Arista had in producing their artists. Every song sounds as if Phil Spector were in the next room screaming "more stuff!" Not one song is allowed to breathe; they all have to soar, with maximum instrumentation, overdub vocals, etc. How much more satisfying it would have been if a few of the numbers had been done simply! Example: why clutter up "As Time Goes By"? You've got a piano, and Carly, and Stevie Wonder's terrific harmonica for accent -- nothing else needed.
(BTW, Arista didn't only do this to Carly Simon. I remember being at an Arista-sponsored Whitney Houston concert in 1986 and thinking: this girl's got one of the great voices of all time, but why is every number over the top? A great arranger would have gone for contrast, letting Whitney rip on the powerhouse numbers while toning the ballads way down.)
That said ... the songs here are SO damn good, and Simon's voice is in top form. "Coming Around Again" is an example of how a talented songwriter can get personal without being mawkish or boring. Carly, if you ever get restless, how about giving us an "Unplugged" version?
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