Who Did Carly Simon Open Her Archive To? Comes in Waves and the Design of "The House"

Where this essay stands

I have not yet heard Comes in Waves as a full album. I will not judge Simon's voice, the arrangements, or the sequence of its twelve tracks here.

My subject is the archive as it appeared on August 22, 2026. I read the official site, its privacy policy, and an August 16 report from WKOL. That report says the personal archive, prepared over nine years, is due to open publicly this fall with previously unseen photographs and film, unreleased recordings, unfinished songs, handwritten lyrics, artwork, and notebooks.² Parts of it are already visible on the official site. This essay reads that preview, not the finished form the archive may take after its formal opening.

New work enters the archive as soon as it is finished

On her official home page, Simon writes about her habit of keeping everything: notebooks, contact sheets, recordings, drafts, and boxes of tapes. Parts of the new songs had been sitting in those boxes, waiting to be picked up again. Comes in Waves did not appear in a separate space after the past had been put away. Stored fragments returned to the present as songs.³

The album page gives each of the twelve tracks its own credits and lyrics, followed by a box containing session takes, drafts, and photographs. Anyone can read the credits and lyrics. Members can open the box.⁴

Archiving does not wait for the record to grow old. The site reconnects the branches cut from the final work: a take that was left out, words that changed, the people who shared the room. The album arrives with part of its making already attached.

The front room is public; the inner rooms are for members

The public part of "The house" has a timeline of albums, books, films, and turning points. Visitors can sample footage from Simon's 1995 concert at Grand Central Terminal. Six photographs and paper items are on view. The site says the full collection sits in the vault, scanned at archival resolution and accompanied by Simon's notes.¹

A page from a 1971 scrapbook makes the boundary especially clear. It shows a young Simon holding a dark rose and a small note. Anyone can open and share this one page. The rest of the scrapbook is waiting inside.⁵

One page released from Simon's 1971 scrapbook. Image source: Carly Simon's official page, "The rose."

Giving away one page also points toward the door that holds the rest. Each item has its own access level. "Public" and "private" are not the only settings.

Calling it a house does not hide the locks

The warmth of the design deserves some skepticism. A house is not a public institution. Its owner chooses what guests may see, and much of the working material requires an account.

The official privacy policy makes those boundaries concrete. Starchive.io runs the site and archive platform. It keeps track of membership tier, songs played, favorites, scrapbook notes, and progress through the archive. Unpublished images served to signed-in members may carry a faint mark that identifies the recipient. The policy also says that personal information is not sold or shared with advertisers and gives visitors a way to turn measurement off.⁶

The rooms, then, are governed spaces. A guest can browse some material, a member can open more boxes, and protected work is not meant to leave the house. Rejecting the museum model does not remove the institution. It replaces it with another one.

Fans bring their memories back into the room

Community takes up almost as much space as the archive itself. The site calls it a salon rather than a feed. There are no follower counts, streaks, or loud badges. In their place are shared album evenings, notes and voice memos from Simon, small gatherings, questions, and archive tours.¹

"Song Stories" organizes fan memories by song, era, place, and feeling. A fan does not simply look at a finished career. They can return the time and place in which a song became part of their own life.

We do not yet know whether those stories will become durable, searchable cultural records or remain posts among members. The design nevertheless places Simon's notes and fan memories under the same roof. On the home page, she says she wants to give something back to the people who have carried her songs for so long. The exchange can run both ways. Listeners can return the years in which they carried them.³

Deciding who gets a key while the work continues

In label-led reissues, the selection of a saleable past can continue after the artist falls silent. The official archiving of Les Rallizes Denudes changed the distance between listeners, bootleg haze, and the recordings through the work of a rights holder.

Simon's house differs from both. The person who owns this past is alive, making songs, and opening old boxes herself. Her notes can remain with the material. That is a real advantage. It is also a limit. Without an independent catalogue, items she chooses not to show, or items that do not fit her account of her life, will be harder to see.

She has opened the archive first to the fans who have carried the songs with them. She has not handed everyone the same key. A passing visitor gets the timeline and a few images. A member opens boxes from the sessions. A participating fan leaves a memory in the room.

The scrapbook page from 1971 holds the whole arrangement in miniature. One sheet has left the house. The others remain inside. The door is open, but Simon still decides which room opens next.

Sources and notes

• This essay reflects pages available on August 22, 2026. Access and membership terms may change after the planned formal opening this fall.
• Comes in Waves has not been heard in full, so the essay makes no judgment about the music itself.
• The official timeline dates This Kind of Love to 2008, while the album page calls it a 2009 release. This essay follows the site's broader description of an eighteen-year interval and does not rely on the conflicting year.