Carly Simon - Tranquillo (Melt My Heart)

7th track from "Boys In The Trees" (1978). The real finds on "Boys in the Trees" are when she (pardon the pun) branches out. "Tranquillo" finds Simon in a lightly funky disco setting...

~excerpt from a review by John Jones
http://www.amazon.com/Boys-Trees-Carly-Simon/dp/B001ET083U

In a 1978 review of the album in Rolling Stone, Janet Maslin wrote that Paul McCartney "was confident that he'd successfully made the transition, in his audience's mind, from boyish sex symbol to full grown family man." The same, she implied, was true for Carly Simon. Well, heh, I'm not at all sure Carly Simon has ever ceased to be a sex symbol, blessed as she is with being one of rock's most photogenic stars as well as "the subject of a succession of provocative, classy, groundbreaking album covers." But this particular song finds her torn between being a dancing queen and a mom—and lovingly siding with the mom part. And that's why I like the heart of this song as well as its gorgeous westcoast sound.

~thatMimosaGrove

***

Btw, the album cover has always intrigued me and I recently discovered the following:

Among all of Carly Simon's album covers, Boys in the Trees stands as the pièce de résistance. The inspiration for this sultry, sophisticated image was of course the album's stunning title song. A steamy portrait of the longing, guilt and hesitation that accompanies adolescent sexual awakening, the song's lyrics are among Carly's most introspective and incisive, while the accompaniment - a trio of acoustic guitars that strum and pluck and arrive at sudden, dramatic flourishes - serves as a perfect musical landscape for the swirl of feelings the song depicts.

It was Carly's own idea that the cover photograph should be a surreal representation of the song. She initially imagined being photographed "in a child-sized bed, with huge trees outside looking threatening", but she credited the photographer Deborah Turbeville with arriving at an even more surreal concept. It was Turbeville, whose work often centres on dancers, who chose the ballet studio as the setting for the album's photographs. On the cover, and by placing her subject off-centre, Turbeville emphasizes the vast emptiness of the studio, and thereby allows Carly's presence - the curve of her body, her thoughtful glance, her delicate pull on the stocking and the silky smoothness of her skirt - to fill the space. The light dusting of foliage on the floor adds to the effect, drawing us into her imagination, and allowing us to speculate on what quietly delicious thoughts are prompting that very slight, sensuous, contemplative smile.

It is an image that cannot be taken literally, and so it is more imaginative and feminine than it is intrusive or leering. Thus, it was only right and proper that, while Carly was actually topless during the photo session, a top was painted on to the photograph, covering her bare breasts.

~ http://carlysimonalbumcovers.blogspot.com/2011/06/boys-in-trees-1978.html