Carly Simon

Carly Elisabeth Simon (born June 25, 1945) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and author renowned for her confessional songwriting style and commercial success in the 1970s folk-rock scene. She rose to prominence with her 1971 debut album Carly Simon, featuring the top-10 single "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be", which earned her the Grammy Award for Best New Artist the following year. Her breakthrough hit "You're So Vain" from the 1972 album No Secrets topped the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks, certified gold, and sparked enduring speculation about its subject's identity—a composite of real-life figures including actor Warren Beatty—while Mick Jagger contributed uncredited backing vocals. Simon married fellow singer-songwriter James Taylor in 1972, collaborating on the hit cover "Mockingbird"; the couple had two children before divorcing in 1983 amid Taylor's struggles with addiction. In 1989, her composition "Let the River Run" for the film Working Girl won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, and Grammy Award for Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television, making her the first artist to secure all three honors for a single composition. Over her career, Simon has released more than two dozen studio albums, authored children's books and memoirs, and received two Grammy Awards from 15 nominations, reflecting her enduring influence despite periods of commercial variability and personal health challenges including breast cancer diagnoses.

Carly Simon was born into a prominent New York publishing family as the youngest daughter of Richard L. Simon, co-founder of Simon & Schuster, and Andrea Heinemann Simon, a civil rights activist and homemaker of Swiss-German and Spanish descent. Her father, of German Jewish heritage, built the family's wealth through the publishing house established in 1924, which afforded the Simons a privileged upbringing split between a Greenwich Village townhouse and a Stamford, Connecticut estate.