Her father was the co-founder of a well-known publishing house and her mother was a civil rights activist.
She was born in New York City, and attended high school at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx.
This singer-songwriter formed a musical duo with her sister, in which they played guitar and covered artists like Harry Belanfonte and Judy Collins.
After briefly attending Sarah Lawrence College as well as the prestigious music school Juilliard, she halted her academic career to become a full-time musician.
The bold move paid off, as her debut album earned her a Grammy for Best New Artist in 1972.
Now at age 82, she’s still releasing new music, and her first album in 18 years will come out on August 14.
Her father was the co-founder of a well-known publishing house and her mother was a civil rights activist
She was born in New York City, and attended high school at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx
She’s the iconic music artist Carly Simon, whose debut single That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be was released in 1971.
She had three siblings – sisters Joanna, born in 1936, Lucy, born in 1940, and brother Peter, born in 1947 – who have all passed away.
In a 2015 NPR interview, the songstress looked back on her time as one half of Simon Sisters, alongside her older sister Lucy.
‘We started singing together in my junior or senior year of high school. She was already in college, and she got a guitar first and learned some chords, which she taught me on the weekends and holidays when she’d come home,’ she shared.
‘We had a book of folk songs in our house on Martha’s Vineyard. We would just look through that book and just gobble it up. We were so happy when we learned more than four chords,’ the singer recalled.
Simon’s 2015 memoir Boys in the Trees revealed shocking details of her life.
One of the things she wrote about was being involved in sexual encounters with a boy in his teens when she was just seven years old.
‘Your libido overpowers everything! You’re so libidinous even at the age of nine and ten. And sometimes there’s an outlet there. I bet in many more cases than we know about there is,’ she told People magazine in November 2015.
She’s the iconic music artist Carly Simon, whose debut single That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be came out in 1971; pictured in 2017
Simon pictured center in her senior year of high school in 1961
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Should Carly Simon finally reveal the remaining men behind ‘You’re So Vain’?
In the same interview she also admitted that ex-boyfriend Warren Beatty is one of the people she slams in her most famous song, You’re So Vain.
Ever since its release in November 1972, fans have speculated over who inspired the hit.
‘I have confirmed that the second verse is Warren,’ she said.
When asked if he knew, she quipped: ‘Warren thinks the whole thing is about him!’
The singer said the No. 1 song is about three men, although she didn’t name the others.
She said she’d probably never reveal who verses one and three refer to, or ‘at least until they know it’s about them.’
The music artist (L) attended Riverdale Country School in the Bronx
This baby photo was included in her senior yearbook
Within the 384-page book she claims she ‘adored’ Beatty, who even tried to dissuade her from marrying her first husband James Taylor.
‘I adored him,’ she wrote. ‘He tried to get me not to marry James. He said “He’s a drug addict.”‘
Simon was married to Taylor from 1972 to 1983, but also had romantic involvement with the likes of Mick Jagger, Kris Kristofferson, Jack Nicholson and Cat Stevens.
She and Taylor welcomed daughter Sarah Maria, in January 1974, and son Benjamin in 1977.
She went on to marry poet James Hart in 1987 and they divorced 20 years later – ‘he turned out to be gay,’ she says in the book.
Last week Simon released her latest single, Howl, the lead single off her upcoming album Comes In Waves.
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