Carly Elisabeth Simon (born June 25, 1943 or 1945) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and children’s author. She rose to fame in the 1970s with a string of hit records; her 13 Top 40 U.S. hits include “Anticipation” (No. 13), “The Right Thing to Do” (No. 17), “Haven’t Got Time for the Pain” (No. 14), “You Belong to Me” (No. 6), “Coming Around Again” (No. 18), and her four Gold-certified singles “You’re So Vain” (No. 1), “Mockingbird” (No. 5, a duet with James Taylor), “Nobody Does It Better” (No. 2) from the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, and “Jesse” (No. 11). She has authored five children’s books as well as two memoirs.
In 1963, Simon began performing with her sister Lucy Simon as the Simon Sisters. The duo released three albums, beginning with Meet the Simon Sisters, which featured the song “Winkin’, Blinkin’ and Nod”; based on the poem by Eugene Field, the song became a minor hit and reached No. 73 on the Billboard Hot 100.
After Lucy left the group, Carly found great success as a solo artist with her 1971 self-titled debut album; it won her the Grammy Award for Best New Artist, and spawned her first Top 10 single “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be” (No. 10), which earned her a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Simon’s second album, Anticipation, followed later that year and became an even greater success; it spawned the successful singles “Anticipation” and “Legend in Your Own Time”, earned her another Grammy Award nomination, and became her first album to be certified Gold by the RIAA. Simon achieved international fame with her third album, No Secrets (1972), which sat at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for five weeks and was certified Platinum. The album spawned the worldwide hit “You’re So Vain”, which sat at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks, and earned Simon three Grammy Award nominations, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year. The second single “The Right Thing to Do”, as well as its B-side “We Have No Secrets”, were also successful.
Her fourth album, Hotcakes (1974), soon followed and became an instant success; it reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200, went Gold within two weeks of release, and spawned the hit singles “Mockingbird” and “Haven’t Got Time for the Pain”. In 1975, Simon’s fifth album Playing Possum, and the compilation The Best of Carly Simon, both appeared. The former made the Top 10 on the Billboard 200 chart and spawned the hit single “Attitude Dancing” (No. 21), and the latter eventually went 3x Platinum, becoming Simon’s best-selling release.
In 1977, Simon recorded “Nobody Does It Better” as the theme song to the Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, and it became a worldwide hit. The song garnered her another Grammy Award nomination, and was the No. 1 Adult Contemporary hit of 1977.[7] Retrospectively, it has been ranked one of the greatest Bond themes.[8][9][10] Simon began recording more songs for films in the 1980s, including “Coming Around Again” for the film Heartburn (1986). The song became a major Adult Contemporary hit, and the Coming Around Again album appeared the following year, to further critical and commercial success. The album earned Simon another Grammy Award nomination, went Platinum, and spawned three more Top 10 Adult Contemporary hit singles; “Give Me All Night”, “The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of”, and “All I Want Is You”. With her 1988 hit “Let the River Run”, from the film Working Girl, Simon became the first artist to win a Grammy Award, an Academy Award, and a Golden Globe Award for a song composed and written, as well as performed, entirely by a single artist.
One of the most popular of the confessional singer/songwriters who emerged in the early 1970s, Simon has 24 Billboard Hot 100-charting singles and 28 Billboard Adult Contemporary charting singles. Among her various accolades, she has won two Grammy Awards (from 14 nominations), and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for “You’re So Vain” in 2004. AllMusic called her “one of the quintessential singer-songwriters of the ’70s”.[4] She has a contralto vocal range, and has cited Odetta as a significant influence. Simon was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1994. She was honored with the Boston Music Awards Lifetime Achievement in 1995, and received a Berklee College of Music Honorary Doctor of Music Degree in 1998. In 2005, Simon was nominated for a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but she has yet to claim her star. In 2012, she was honored with the Founders Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. On November 5, 2022, Simon will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The Best of Carly Simon is singer-songwriter Carly Simon’s first greatest hits album, released by Elektra Records, on November 24, 1975. Covering the first five years of her career, the compilation includes eight top 20 hit singles from her first five albums, as well as two album cuts from No Secrets (1972): “Night Owl” and “We Have No Secrets”, the latter of which was released as the B-side to the single “The Right Thing to Do”.
For many years, this was Simon’s only greatest hits collection, and as a result, it became her best selling album. In the late 1990s, sales in the United States alone stood at over three million copies. However, in later years the collection could not be considered a complete or definitive representation of Simon’s best or most popular work because it did not include her major hits from the mid-1970s onward, such as “Nobody Does It Better”, “You Belong to Me”, “Jesse”, “Coming Around Again” and “Let the River Run”.
The fact that Simon had changed record labels several times (moving from Elektra to Warner Bros. to Epic to Arista) made a more wide-ranging collection a difficult proposition. A live album, Greatest Hits Live (1988), went some way to rectifying this issue, but the original recorded versions were eventually collected on the three-disc boxed-set Clouds in My Coffee (1995), the two-disc set Anthology (2003), and the single-disc Reflections: Carly Simon’s Greatest Hits (2004), which went on to become a great commercial success, and was certified Gold by the RIAA in 2007. (wikipedia)
Carly Simon was among the pop royalty of the singer/songwriter era of the early ’70s. This album collects her most popular songs of the first five years of her solo career. Opening with the powerful “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be,” for which Simon received the 1971 Best New Artist Grammy Award, it includes four tunes from the classic No Secrets album, including the number one hit “You’re So Vain.” Simon’s duet with then-husband James Taylor on “Mockingbird” was also a Top Ten hit. “Anticipation,” with its classic “I rehearsed those words just late last night,” and the repetitive coda “these are the good old days,” though merely a ketchup commercial to a later generation, still retains its power here in the original version. Simon’s insightful lyrics and evocative voice remain fresh years later. This album is a good starting point for those interested in discovering why. (by Jim Newsom)
Personnel:
Eddie Bongo (percussion on 10.)
Michael Brecker (saxophone on 03.)
Ray Cooper (percussion on 02. + 08.)
Paul Glanz (piano on 04. + 09.)
Andrew Gold (guitar on 10.)
Jim Gordon (drums on 06., 07. + 10.)
Paul Griffin (piano on 01.)
Nicky Hopkins (piano on 08.)
Dr. John (keyboards on 03.)
Jimmy Johnson (drums on 01.)
Kirby Johnson (piano on 07.)
Jim Keltner (drums on 03., 05. + 08.)
Paul Keough (guitar on 07.)
Bobby Keys (saxophone on 03. + 08.)
Tony Levin (bass on 01.)
Ralph MacDonald (percussion on 03. + 05.)
Andy Newmark (drums on 02., percussion on 04. + 09.)
Richard Perry (percussion on 06.)
Robbie Robertson (guitar on 03.)
Jim Ryan (guitar on 03. – 07. + 09., bass on 02., 04. + 09.)
Carly Simon (vocals, piano on 01., 02., 04. – 06., 09. + 10., guitar on 04., 07. + 09)
James Taylor (vocals on 03., guitar on 05.)
Klaus Voormann (bass on 03., 05. – 07.)
Willie Weeks (bass on 10.)
+
background vocals:
Liza Strike – Viki Brown (on 02
Carl Hall – Tasha Thomas- Lani Groves (on 05.)
Bonnie Bramlett – Doris Troy – Paul McCartney – Linda McCartney (on 08,)
Carole King – Abigale Haness – Kenny Moore (on 10.)
Tracklist:
01. That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be (from “Carly Simon”; 1971) (Simon/ Brackman 4.18
02. The Right Thing To Do (from “No Secrets”; 1972) ) (Simon) 3.01
03. Mockingbird (with James Taylor) (from “Hotcakes”; 1974) (Foxx/.Foxx/Taylor) 3.50
04. Legend in Your Own Time (from “Anticipation” ;1971) (Simon) 3.44
05. Haven’t Got Time For The Pain (from “Hotcakes”; 1974) (Simon/Brackman) 3.39
06. You’re So Vain (from “No Secrets”; 1972) (Simon) 4.18
07. (We Have) No Secrets (from “No Secrets”; 1972) (Simon) 3.57
08. Night Owl (from “No Secrets”; 1972) (Taylor) 3.51
09. Anticipation (from “Anticipation” ;1971) (Simon) 3.21
10. Attitude Dancing (from “Playing Possum”; 1975) (Simon/Brackman) 3.53
The official website: