Carly Simon

Carly Simon biography

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. Throughout her career, she has amassed 13 Top 40 hits including "You're So Vain", "Nobody Does It Better", and "Coming Around Again".

The former wife of another notable singer-songwriter, James Taylor, she has two children, Sarah "Sally" Maria Taylor and Ben Taylor, who are also musicians.

She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1994.

Early life

Carly 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), 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, she revealed her full ancestry as Jewish, African, Cuban, and French.

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

Early career

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

Going solo

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 Yusuf Islam (known then as 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, though perhaps about James Taylor, whom she had known since childhood - was "Legend In Your Own Time" which made a more modest impact on the charts, peaking at #50 on the Hot 100. 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.

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