Songfacts®:

• Carly Simon wrote "Anticipation" while waiting for Cat Stevens to come over for their first date (she was making chicken with a béarnaise sauce). She was his opening act for a concert at the Troubadour in Los Angeles on April 6, 1971, and they were set to play again at Carnegie Hall in New York City on June 5. Simon lived in the City, so she invited Stevens over for the date a few days before that show.
  
  He was late, so Simon burned off some nervous energy by sitting down with her guitar. She imitated Stevens' style (he was her favorite artist) from his song "Hard Headed Woman," where he keeps it mellow but then ramps it up for a section when he sings, "I know many fine feathered friends." Simon played loud, singing the word that came into her mind because she was waiting for Stevens: "Anticipation."
  
  "I was anticipating his arrival," she said in the book Anthems We Love. "So I just started the song and I wrote the whole song, words and music, before he got there that night. So in about 15 minutes I wrote the whole song. Three verses and the choruses and the outro. That's only one of three times that that's ever happened to me. That I just sat down and wrote the whole song in just one stretch. It was only about 20 minutes that he was late."
• This song is very much about living in the moment. Simon isn't sure this relationship is going to last, but she decides to just enjoy it while they're together. "These are the good old days," goes the refrain at the end.
• Simon performed "Anticipation" for the first time when she opened for Cat Stevens at Carnegie Hall on June 5, 1971. The song got a great response, so she knew it was a winner. She added it to her repertoire and performed it a handful of times before recording it.
• The romance between Cat Stevens and Carly Simon was short-lived, but they forged an enduring friendship Simon spoke of fondly many years later. She ended up marrying James Taylor in 1972 (they divorced in 1983).
• This song was revived in a series of Heinz ketchup commercials that started airing in 1974, including one starring a young Corey Feldman. Heinz ketchup is thick and pours very slowly. In the commercials, a person would be shown waiting for the ketchup to come out of the bottle as the chorus of "Anticipation" plays in the background. For this reason, many people think of this song as "The Ketchup Song."
• Simon had some concerns about licensing her song for a ketchup commercial, which seemed a little gauche. But she and James Taylor had just had their first child, Sally. Simon wasn't sure where her life and career would take her, but she knew she didn't want to be dependent on James. Her manager talked her into taking the deal, which provided a nice payoff. The commercial was pretty funny, so it didn't seem to cheapen the song. It remains one of the most memorable commercial uses of a popular song.
• This was Simon's second single, following "That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be," the only single released from her self-titled debut album. "Anticipation" was released ahead of her second album, and did indeed create some anticipation for it - it ended up being her first Gold album. She took it to a new level with her third album, No Secrets, the one with "You're So Vain."
• Simon's musical director Jimmy Ryan played bass on this track, but on the last verse he played guitar-style riffs on the instrument. The other personnel were Andy Newmark on drums, Paul Glanz on piano, and Simon on acoustic guitar and vocals.
• Simon earned a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, but she lost to Helen Reddy for "I Am Woman."
• Simon recorded an acoustic version with her son, Ben Taylor, for her 2009 album, Never Been Gone.
• ABC used this song in a promotional campaign for The Connors, the show they launched with the cast of Roseanne after cutting ties with it star, Roseanne Barr.