Carly Simon

Carly Simon
Simon at the 1989 Academy Awards (March 1989)
Background information
Birth name	Carly Elisabeth Simon
Born	June 25, 1945 (1945-06-25) (age 65) New York City, New York, United States
Origin	Riverdale, Bronx, New York, United States
Genres	Pop, rock, adult contemporary, pop standards
Occupations	Singer-songwriter, musician, actress, writer
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, piano
Years active	1964–present
Labels	Elektra (1971–1979) Warner Bros. (1980–1984) Epic (1985–1986) Arista (1987–2001) Rhino (2002–2004) Columbia (2005–2007) Hear Music (2008) Iris (2009–present)
Associated acts	James Taylor, Elephant's Memory
Website	carlysimon.com

Carly Elisabeth Simon (born June 25, 1945) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and children's author. She rose to fame in the 1970s with a string of hit records, and has since been the recipient of two Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and a Golden Globe Award for her work. Simon has a contralto vocal range.

She is the former wife of another notable singer-songwriter, James Taylor, with whom she has two children: Sarah "Sally" Maria Taylor and Ben Taylor, who are also musicians.

A long-respected and acclaimed artist, Simon was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1994.

[edit] Early life

Simon was born in New York City, New York. Her father, of Jewish descent, was Richard L. Simon (co-founder of Simon & Schuster), a pianist who often played Chopin and Beethoven at home. Her mother was Andrea Louise Simon (née Heinemann),^[1] a civil rights activist and singer of black and German descent. In a 2004 interview with fashion designer Michael Kors for the July issue of Interview Magazine, Simon revealed her full ancestry as being Jewish, African, Cuban and French, making it evident that her multiracial mother was of German, Cuban and African ancestry.^[2]

Carly Simon was raised in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx, New York City ^[3] and has two older sisters, Joanna (b. 1940) and Lucy (b. 1943), and a younger brother, Peter (b. 1947). Simon, her sisters and brother Peter, were raised nominal Catholics, according to a book of photography Peter published in the late 1990s.^[4] She attended Riverdale Country School. She also briefly attended Sarah Lawrence College and joined Alpha Gamma Delta, before dropping out to pursue music.

[edit] Early career

Simon's career began with a short-lived attempt with her sister Lucy as The Simon Sisters. They had a minor hit in 1964 which was called "Winkin', Blinkin', and Nod", and made three albums together before Lucy left to get married and start a family. Later, Simon collaborated with eclectic New York rockers Elephant's Memory for about six months. She also appeared in the 1971 Milos Forman movie Taking Off and played an auditioning singer and sang "Long Term Physical Effects", which was included in Taking Off, the 1971 soundtrack for the movie.

Her solo music career began in 1971, with the self-titled Carly Simon on Elektra Records. The album contained her breakthrough top-ten hit "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be". It was followed quickly by a second album, Anticipation. The title song from that album, written about a romance between Simon and Cat Stevens, was a significant hit, reaching #3 at Easy Listening radio and #13 on Billboard's Hot 100. The next single release - also reportedly written about Stevens - was "Legend In Your Own Time" which failed to make much of an impact on the charts.^[5] After their brief liaison during 1970–1971 ended amicably, Stevens wrote his song "Sweet Scarlet" about Simon, who also had highly publicized relationships with Warren Beatty, Mick Jagger, Kris Kristofferson, and James Taylor during this period.

In 1973 Simon scored the biggest success of her career with the classic global smash "You're So Vain". It hit #1 on the U.S. Pop and Adult Contemporary charts and sold over a million copies in the United States alone. It was one of the decade's biggest hits and propelled Simon's breakthrough album No Secrets to #1 on the U.S. album charts, where it stayed for six consecutive weeks. The album achieved Gold status that year, but by the album's 25th anniversary in 1997, the album had been certified Platinum. "You're So Vain" received Grammy Award nominations for Record Of The Year, Song Of The Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female. Additionally, as of 2008, it is listed at #72 on the Billboard Hot 100's definitive list of the Hot 100's top 100 songs from the chart's first 50 years, August 1958 through July 2008.

The subject of the song itself has become one of the biggest enigmas in popular music, as this track also carries one of the most famous lyrics: "You're so vain/I bet you think this song is about you." Simon has never publicly admitted who the song is about. She hinted that it could be a composite of several people, and for many people the most likely "suspects" have always been Beatty or Jagger, who sings backup vocals on this recording. Simon has given vague hints over the decades to a variety of talk shows and publications, saying that riddles wouldn't be interesting if everyone knew the answers to them. On August 5, 2003, she did finally auction off the information to the winner of a charity function for a grand total of US$50,000, with the condition that the winner (a television executive, Dick Ebersol on NBC's Today Show) not reveal who it is.^[6]

Later in 1973, the follow-up single, "The Right Thing To Do", was another sizable hit, reaching #4 Adult Contemporary and #17 Pop. That same year Simon performed on Lee Clayton's album Lee Clayton and co-sang on the song "New York Suite 409" and on Livingston Taylor's album Over the Rainbow and sang with both Livingston and his famous brother, James Taylor (who was, by then, her husband) on the songs "Loving Be My New Horizon" and "Pretty Woman".

In 1974, Simon followed the smash No Secrets album with Hotcakes, which reached #3 on Billboard's Album Chart and was certified Gold, though it did not match the sales of No Secrets. Hotcakes included two top ten singles, "Mockingbird," a duet with James Taylor that peaked at #5 on Billboard's Pop Singles chart, and "Haven't Got Time For the Pain," which hit #2 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart.^[7] The same year, Simon provided vocals on Tom Rush's album Ladies Love Outlaws and co-sang with Rush on "No Regrets" and as backup on "Claim On Me". In 1975, Elektra released her first greatest-hits album, The Best of Carly Simon, which became Simon's all time best selling disc and eventually reached Triple-Platinum status in the United States.

Simon's record sales declined considerably with 1975's Playing Possum and 1976's Another Passenger. Playing Possum was a Top Ten album, with a Top 40 single "Attitude Dancing" and two other charting singles,^[8], but Another Passenger produced only one single, "It Keeps You Running," which barely scraped into the top 50.^[9]. 1976 also saw Simon contributing backup vocals on the song "Peter" on Peter Ivers's album Peter Ivers. She also made her only appearance on Saturday Night Live. It was a pre-taped performance—a rare occurrence on that show—because Simon suffered terrible bouts of stage fright. In the appearance, she sang two songs: "Half A Chance" and her signature song, "You're So Vain".

In 1977, Simon had a surprise international hit with "Nobody Does It Better", the theme to the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. The million-selling Gold single held at #2 for several weeks, behind Debby Boone's mega-hit "You Light Up My Life" (which became the biggest hit of the entire decade). "Nobody Does It Better" remains Simon's second-biggest U.S. hit, after "You're So Vain". It was 1977's biggest Adult Contemporary hit, where it held at #1 for seven straight weeks. It also received Grammy nominations for Song Of The Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance Female.

Also in 1977, Simon co-produced Libby Titus's album Libby Titus and sang backup on two songs: "Can This Be Our Love Affair?" and "Darkness 'Til Dawn".

Simon's career took another upward swing in 1978 with the hit album Boys In The Trees. The album produced another Top 10 Pop and Adult Contemporary hit with the jazzy and sensual "You Belong To Me". Boys In The Trees was a major success, and returned Simon to Platinum album status in the U.S. It later earned Simon yet another Grammy nomination. She was featured on the front covers of People and Rolling Stone magazines that spring. Also in 1978, Simon and James Taylor sang backing vocals on two songs for Taylor's sister Kate's album Kate Taylor: "Happy Birthday Sweet Darling" and "Jason & Ida". Simon and Taylor also sang backup on three songs on John Hall's debut solo album John Hall, "The Fault", "Good Enough" and "Voyagers". Simon and Taylor would also sing backup on one song, "Power", from Hall's next album, which is also titled Power (1979).

On November 2, 1978, Simon guested on the song "I Live In The Woods" at a live, four-hour concert by Burt Bacharach and the Houston Symphony Orchestra at Jones Hall in Houston, Texas. All the songs at that concert became Bacharach's album Woman, which was released in 1979. That year, shortly after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, from September 19 to September 22, a series of concerts were held at New York City's Madison Square Garden and sponsored by Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE), a group of musicians against nuclear power, co-founded by John Hall. Always politically active, Simon and James Taylor were part of the concerts which later became a documentary and concert film, No Nukes (1980) as well as a live album of the same name (1979).

Simon released her last album for Elektra, Spy, in 1979. It sold poorly, although a harder-edged single from the album, "Vengeance", was a modest hit and received airplay on U.S. album rock stations. "Vengeance" earned Simon a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Vocal Performance Female in early 1980 - the first year to feature the new category.

From 1972 to 1979, Simon sang backup vocals on the following James Taylor songs and albums (not counting compilations): "One Man Parade" from 1972's One Man Dog, "Rock 'n' Roll Is Music Now", "Let It All Fall Down", "Me And My Guitar", "Daddy's Baby" and "Ain't No Song" from 1974's Walking Man, "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)" from 1975's Gorilla, "Shower the People", "A Junkie's Lament", "Slow Burning Love" and "Family Man" from 1976's In the Pocket, and "B.S.U.R." from 1979's Flag. She also co-wrote with Taylor the song "Terra Nova" on his 1977 album JT. At the end of the song, Simon sang what has come to be known as "Lambert's Cove".