Carly Simon has teased her first album in 20 years.
The 82-year-old has revealed the first single of her new album.
Howl is the lead single on the album, Comes in Waves, and is a letter to a friend whose lover has just left them. “Howl lives in that space between betrayal and forgiveness, where anger has to be voiced before it can be released,” the singer said in a statement about the track. “It’s about letting the frustration out, so it doesn’t sit and simmer. The song begins in anger, but it moves toward forgiveness and speaks to any situation where trust has been broken.”
The lyrics include the words, “Howl like the wind/Roar like the river/Wail like the rain/Cry, shout, and shiver,” before it says, “Call love a liar.”
Simon wrote and recorded her new album at her studio in Martha’s Vineyard. It contains nine new songs, plus two songs she had written previously and revisited. Her children, son Ben Taylor, and daughter, Sally Taylor, both feature on the album, and Sally produced the artwork for the album.
The theme of the album is “resetting oneself,” according to her label. The album “does not attempt to recreate the past,” according to a statement, but “continues the conversation Simon has been having with her audience for decades, one grounded in truth, vulnerability, and a refusal to simplify emotion. It is a reminder of an artist still fully engaged with her craft, still asking questions, and still finding new ways to articulate what it means to live, to love, and to let go.”
Comes in Waves will be released on 14 August.
