Carly Simon

Carly Simon rose to prominence as a leading figure in the American singer/songwriter scene throughout the early 1970s, propelled by a strong run of singles such as "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be," "Anticipation," and the global number-one smash "You're So Vain." Listeners connected with the direct emotional truth running through her material, while her vocal delivery balanced intimate fragility with confident pop energy. Following the major breakthrough of her 1972 album No Secrets, she maintained steady commercial momentum, placing Hotcakes (1974) and Boys in the Trees (1978) inside the Top Ten and scoring another worldwide success with the James Bond theme "Nobody Does It Better" from The Spy Who Loved Me. During the 1980s she increasingly balanced original albums with film work, most notably winning Academy Award, Grammy, and Golden Globe honors for "Let the River Run," the 1988 theme to Working Girl. Entering the new century she added a parallel career as a children's author and continued charting with jazz and pop standards collections such as the Top Ten Moonlight Serenade in 2005. Her 2009 album Never Been Gone offered acoustic reinterpretations of earlier songs, after which she concentrated on two memoirs, Boys in the Trees: A Memoir (2015) and Touched by the Sun: My Friendship with Jackie (2019). The archival set These Are the Good Old Days: The Carly Simon and Jac Holzman Story appeared in 2023.

Raised in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, Simon was the daughter of Richard L. Simon, co-founder of the publishing house Simon & Schuster and an accomplished classical pianist, and Andrea Simon (née Heinemann), a singer and Civil Rights activist. Her siblings included younger brother Peter, who became a photographer, and older sisters Joanna, a mezzo soprano and journalist, and Lucy, a singer, songwriter, and theater composer. To manage a childhood stutter she began singing and composing at an early age. With her sister Lucy she formed the short-lived folk duo the Simon Sisters, which issued several albums on the independent Kapp label in the mid-1960s before disbanding in 1969. The following year she signed with Jac Holzman's Elektra Records, which released her self-titled solo debut in 1971. Writing in a reflective, confessional vein comparable to contemporaries Carole King and Joni Mitchell, she achieved early recognition with the Grammy-nominated "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be," a Top Ten single that examined conventional views of marriage. She followed with the similarly successful Anticipation, whose title track—reportedly composed ahead of a date with Cat Stevens and later featured in Heinz ketchup advertisements—also became a notable hit.

After receiving the Grammy for Best New Artist in March 1972, Simon reached household-name status with the November release of "You're So Vain" from her third album, No Secrets. The incisive portrait of a self-absorbed romantic partner topped charts worldwide and prompted years of speculation regarding its subject; Simon later indicated it drew from three men, naming only actor Warren Beatty. The album itself reached number one in several countries and earned platinum certification in the United States. Around this period she married singer-songwriter James Taylor, who joined her on the 1974 Top Ten single "Mockingbird" from her fourth album Hotcakes. That record's upbeat portrayal of domestic life appealed to audiences and placed it at number three, just behind labelmates Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. Playing Possum, issued a year later, leaned further into rock and adult-contemporary territory with tracks such as "Waterfall" and "Attitude Dancing," its controversial lingerie-clad cover photograph earning another Grammy nomination for album packaging. She sustained momentum through the latter half of the decade with the softer pop sound of 1976's Another Passenger, which featured contributions from members of the Doobie Brothers and Little Feat and included the Michael McDonald-penned hit "It Keeps You Runnin'." In 1977 she composed the theme for the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me; "Nobody Does It Better" became an immediate classic and another international chart-topper. Boys in the Trees returned her to the Top Ten in 1978 and showcased a broader range of moods, highlighted by the jazzy single "You Belong to Me." She closed the decade with Spy (1979), a commercial underperformer that nevertheless contained fan favorites such as "Never Been Gone."

After fulfilling her Elektra contract, Simon moved to Warner Bros. for Come Upstairs (1980). Its single "Jesse" improved on Spy's performance, yet she experienced a gradual commercial decline through much of the 1980s. She and Taylor, who divorced in 1983, appeared in the protest film No Nukes and contributed to the Grammy-winning Sesame Street collections In Harmony and In Harmony 2 produced by her sister Lucy. Torch (1981) found her interpreting jazz standards well before such projects became fashionable among rock artists. Over the next several years she worked as a session musician and soundtrack contributor, including the Chic-produced "Why" from the 1982 film Soup for One, which charted in the United Kingdom, and Lynn Goldsmith's 1983 Will Powers track "Kissing with Confidence." Although Hello Big Boy (1983) and Spoiled Girl (1985) sold modestly, she continued supplying material for films including Swing Shift, Nothing in Common, and The Karate Kid II while appearing on albums by Jesse Colin Young and Nils Lofgren. Signing with Arista, she rebounded with Coming Around Again (1987) and its title track, written for Mike Nichols's Heartburn. Two years later, another Nichols project, Working Girl, yielded "Let the River Run," which earned her an Oscar, Grammy, and Golden Globe—the first time a single artist achieved all three for one song.

Her 1990s output maintained this eclectic pattern, beginning with the standards collection My Romance and the original-material set Have You Seen Me Lately. She composed further film music for Nichols and Nora Ephron, launched a children's-book career, and received a commission from the Met and Kennedy Center for the family opera Romulus Hunt. Letters Never Sent (1994) drew directly from a box of unsent correspondence discovered at home. After the 1995 retrospective Clouds in My Coffee and the concert film Live at Grand Central, she released Film Noir (1997), her third standards album. A breast-cancer diagnosis at the end of 1997 led to surgery and chemotherapy that paused her performing schedule, prompting the intimate collection The Bedroom Tapes, written and recorded during recovery. Released in 2000, the album was widely praised as a career highlight. She followed with the holiday album Christmas Is Almost Here (2002) and contributed songs to the soundtrack of Disney's 1993 animated feature Piglet's Big Movie, several featuring her children Ben and Sally Taylor. Moonlight Serenade (2005), her fourth standards collection, unexpectedly reached number seven on the Billboard 200, her first Top Ten placement since the mid-1970s. Into White (2007), another set of covers and standards, debuted at number 13. This Kind of Love (2008) marked a return to original material with sparse acoustic arrangements; despite strong reviews and sales, its label Hear Music ceased operations days before release, leading Simon to sue for inadequate promotion. She continued the stripped-down approach on Never Been Gone (2009), which paired acoustic reworkings of older songs with new tracks.

A relatively quiet decade followed. She made occasional live appearances, including a 2013 duet with Taylor Swift on "You're So Vain" and acceptance of an ASCAP Founders Award. In November 2015 she published her first memoir, Boys in the Trees: A Memoir, accompanied by the two-disc compilation Songs from the Trees: A Musical Memoir Collection. One notable studio collaboration during this period was her appearance on Gorillaz's 2017 album Humanz. In late 2019 she released a second memoir, Touched by the Sun: My Friendship with Jackie, recounting her relationship with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. After her brother Peter succumbed to cancer in 2018, both of her sisters also died from the disease in October 2022. The compilation These Are the Good Old Days: The Carly Simon and Jac Holzman Story appeared in September 2023, chronicling her early years and partnership with the Elektra co-founder; it gathered tracks from her first three albums plus an outtake of her cover of John Prine's "Angel from Montgomery" and a previously unreleased demo of "Alone."