A different Carly

"Spoiled Girl" is one of Carly Simon's most disliked album of her career. Many people have complained that it sounds too much like Madonna. But Carly isn't trying to be Madonna...throughout the album, she maintains her maturity and acts her age. (Not that Madonna doesn't.)
Not all the songs on this album are great, but some are the best in her career, in my opinion. "Tired Of Being Blonde", a top 100 single in 1985, has a danceable beat with good lyrics about getting back to "roots" that were once covered with fakeness. "Interview" is one of the best dance tracks I've ever heard, with neat chord changes and great (synthesized) percussion, which makes up for the lackluster lyrics. "Black Honeymoon" is a dark and brooding song about love gone cold, and the arrangement is sparse, adding a good effect. "Anyone But Me" is a dark song about jealousy, and expresses everything that jealous people (my self included) feel. The playful "The Wives Are In Connecticut", Journey-ish "Come Back Home", addictive-sounding "Can't Give It Up", and bratty "Spoiled Girl" are good too. The real clunker of the album is "My New Boyfriend", an empty tune that clashes in its style. (A Gospel opening followed by an edgy dance mix just don't go together in my opinion.)
"Spoiled Girl" is not Carly's worst album. It's a record that probably only her die-hard fans would like. If you were raised on "You're So Vain", skip this one. If not, give this one a try.

An OK album,but no #1

Carly Simon was dropped from Elektra,then Warner Bros. and now,failed to produce #1 singles from her only Epic album,this one. So Epic gave Simon the axe and she went to Arista. There were two Top 20 singles,TIRED OF BEING BLONDE and MY NEW BOYFRIEND. But neither song made it above #16. Just before the release of this album in the summer of 1985,Simon made a cameo appearance as herself in the Columbia romance drama PERFECT starring John Travolta. In her only scene,she throws her Bloody Mary in Travolta's face. She was angry at Travolta's character,Adam Lawrence,a Rolling Stone reporter,after he trashed her in print. The other songs from thia album are OK.

Carly in an experimental mode

This album finds Carly in an experimental mode, whether it was her choice or the record company's isn't clear. Each song was produced by someone different and it is quite evident; the songs are very different sounding, although Carly had a hand in writing most of them. I thought it was quite daring when the record first came out, but I still like the songs, especially the sexy "Can't Give It Up" and "Anyone But Me". I love Carly when she sings her own back-up, as on "Anyone But Me" & "Make Me Feel Something". Carly's wit comes through on "Wives" & "Black Honeymoon", which finds Carly biding her time until she finds someone new so she can then leave her unfaithful lover. Too bad this album was not more successful when it was released; perhaps Carly may have stuck with the experimental methods and produced who-knows-what; not that her output since has been anything but stellar.

Stinging social commentary - and great songs

This is Carly Simon's most underrated album, and if archeologists found it a thousand years from now, they might use it to examine the emotionally wrenching consequences among those of the American metropolitan baby boom generation in the 1980s who treated sex as a cheap, but addicting commodity. In other words, this is more than an album of good songs, it is an album with stingingly accurate social commentary. Carly's has a unifying vision, and she executes it brilliantly. "The Wives Are in Connecticut" presents a recently married man who confesses "the first year I was faithful" en route to a successful seduction after work in Manhattan. He is the classic "yuppie" of 80s lore, nagged by paranoia that his wife may be consorting with who-knows-who up in suburban Connecticut. In "Anyone But Me" and "Can't Give It Up", Carly plumbs the depths of female desire for men who "can't give". "Interview" describes the playfully escalating sexual innuendoes that dominate an encounter between Carly and a young male interviewer. In "Black Honeymoon", a newlywed woman watches humiliated as her husband plots his next sexual conquest with the "girl across the room". "Make Me Feel Something" is the cry of a woman who has had sought "feeling" through pleasure and has no feeling left. "Tonight and Forever", in total contrast, and in answer to "Make Me Feel Something", is a wedding song, anchored firmly in the female frame of mind ("Oh sisters, make my wedding bed"). The groom is nowhere seen, yet is promised, in soaring voices "I am yours!" It is so antithetical to the pleasure-driven addictions of the other songs that it serves to underscore their message of alienation, while proclaiming eternal, committed love as the answer to it. And that's just the lyrics! Musically, Carly's incomparable voice is in fine form, and she latches it successfully to up-tempo beats and Russ Kunkel drum tracks without compromising any of its beauty or her integrity. I especially like her seductive low notes in "Anyone But Me", the utterly gorgeous repeating phrase "Black Honeymoon - I'll be leaving you soon" closing the album, and the gorgeous conclusion of "Tonight and Forever" - a truly ecstatic song. It may or may not be coincidental that the songs with the most interesting lyrics are also the best musically. The four songs I haven't mentioned are second or third rate, and unfortunately those are mainly the ones Amazon allows you to sample. But there is enough substance here to make this one of my favorite pop albums of the 80s.

The Spoiled Girl...

In the midst of the 1980s, Carly Simon grabbed ahold of the popular synth dance pop sound of the time, pouring it over her own classic lyrics, creating the less than well recieved, but still wonderful "Spoiled Girl" album. With more than a passing Madonna-esque sound, you could have thought this would have made a nice hit for the well established singer-songwriter, but inconsistancy in producers, and some dodgy tunes barred it's success. The best songs, in my own opinion, include the bouncy "Interview", and the album opener "My New Boyfriend". The true dud of the collection would be the weak effort of "Tired Of Being Blonde". A should have been hit, this record is a nice addition to any pop fans collection. Fun Carly stuff.

Why did it get a bad rap? Carly didn't Like it!

Carly said in an Interview or in the "Ask Carly" section of her website, that this album was a flop because she didn't like the songs and it didn't sell well. Hello Big Man didn't sell well, but she liked the music.

I personally like the album (as a teen) and I wish she had put more albums out like Spy, Boys in the Trees, Come Upstairs, Hello Big Man, and Spoiled Girl. They have a nice beat. But I guess she can do what she does best writing the way she did in the early to mid 70's and Coming Around Again to now, Slow confessional, touching lyrics.

We love you Carly! We don't care what the reviewers say! We don't care what record sales say! WE LOVE YOUR MUSIC!