SIMON, CARLY

born June 25, 1945, New York, N.Y., U.S. American singer-songwriter best remembered for her soft rock hits in the 1970s. The daughter of the cofounder of the Simon & Schuster publishing house, Simon quit Sarah Lawrence College to pursue a folksinging career with her sister Lucy. In 1966, guided by Bob Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, and accompanied by members of the Band, she began a later-aborted solo album. Several years later, with songs mostly cowritten by film critic and screenwriter Jacob Brackman, Simon had a series of hit albums and singlesprimarily romantic ballads sung in her plaintive altothat included That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be (1971), Anticipation (1971), Mockingbird (a 1974 duet with fellow singer-songwriter James Taylor, whom she married in 1972 and divorced in 1983), and Nobody Does It Better (1977). You're So Vain, which, like the album No Secrets, reached number one in 1972, was reputedly about actor Warren Beatty and featured backing vocals by Mick Jagger, also once thought to be the subject of the song. Simon's career dipped in the early 1980s, but she returned to prominence by composing music for films; she won an Academy Award for Let the River Run, which she also sang, in Working Girl (1989). She also authored several children's books.