James Taylor & Carly Simon - Close Your Eyes

What this video is

Filmed in 1977 at the Taylor-Simon home on Martha's Vineyard, this performance document captures one of the defining couples of 1970s American popular music at their most private. James Taylor had written 'You Can Close Your Eyes' in 1970, originally released on his 1971 album Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon, and had long performed it with female vocal partners. The footage represents the singer-songwriter…

Why it matters

An essential artifact of 1970s singer-songwriter culture, this home performance foregrounds the acoustic guitar duet as an intimate communicative act rather than a commercial product. The song's folk-baroque guitar style, lullaby structure, and unadorned vocal harmonies represent the genre at its…