1974 Carly Simon – Hotcakes

Hotcakes is singer-songwriter Carly Simon‘s fourth studio album. Released in 1974, it became one of her biggest selling albums. The album featured the major hits “Mockingbird”, a duet with her then-husband James Taylor (a cover of a 1963 hit for Inez and Charlie Foxx), and “Haven’t Got Time for the Pain”. Recorded during her pregnancy with her first child, many of the album’s songs reflected Simon’s upbeat mood during this period. The album’s cover photo, taken by Ed Caraeff, shows the pregnant Simon sitting in a gleamingly white kitchen, smiling brightly and wearing a bohemian white linen dress.

The album went gold immediately and it stayed on the charts for eight months, yet it was initially overshadowed commercially by two other major albums released by Simon’s own label, Elektra/Asylum, in the same month as Hotcakes, Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark and Bob Dylan’s Planet Waves. These took the #2 and #1 spots, respectively, on the Billboard album chart while Hotcakes peaked at #3. Hotcakes went on to sell several hundred thousand more copies than Dylan’s album and was listed in the Top 40 of Billboard’s Year End Top albums for 1974, while Planet Waves did not make the Top 50.