Music / Carly Simon

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Born in New York City and now one of the most famous residents of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, Carly Elisabeth Simon (born June 25, 1943) is an American Singer-Songwriter who hit it big in the 1970s with a string of pop/soul hits with a blues sensibility.

Simon's father Richard was co-founder of the Simon & Schuster publishing house who was a classically trained pianist frequently playing the family piano in his spare time. Her older sister Lucy was also a singer and musician, and the two of them started out performing together in the '60s as "The Simon Sisters" before Lucy stepped away to raise her children. Now on her own, Simon attempted being "the next Carole King" but realized her melodies were not ear worms like the ones that came from the Brill Building scene that raised King's songwriting and were better off being performed herself. Interestingly, it took five albums and a compilation release (the page image) for her to gain mainstream traction!

By far, Simon's most famous song is "You're So Vain", a bouncily sarcastic hit about an egotistical male friend with a penchant for homewrecking and globetrotting hedonism. Considered the Ur-Example of the Celebrity Break-Up Song, speculation has been rampant for four decades about who it's about, but Simon has only publicly revealed three letters of the man's name: A, R, and E^note which leaves out the man most assumed it was: Jack Nicholson. She has told a few people, including TV exec Dick (Richard) Ebersol and Howard Stern, but to everyone else, there has been a long list of speculated men, including Mick Jagger (who sang backup on the song), Warren Beatty,^note Fair enough. On November 18, 2015, she admitted the second verse is about him "but he thinks it's the whole song!" guitar builder Daniel Armstrong, and record exec David Lawrence Geffen ^note Geffen has been openly gay for a very long time, but it was heavily rumored that Simon was jealous of his professional favoritism towards his friend Joni Mitchell.. Even Raymond Douglas Davies has been mentioned as a possible. Simon has openly said it is not about her ex-husband James Taylor, but did once joke about it being about Deep Throat (aka W. Mark Felt). ^note She apparently got the idea for the apricot scarf from Nick Nolte, who has only two of the required letters — Nicholas Nolte. In 2015 she finally revealed that each of the three verses is actually about a different man, and the second one is Beatty, but she still intends to take the identities of the other two to her grave.

She was married to James Taylor for most of the 1970s, and they had two kids, Sally and Ben, who are also musicians (who in fact got their start singing backup on Mama's 1987 album Coming Around Again); she's still close friends with Taylor's brother Livingston and his sister Kate also had a singer-songwriting career for a short period and became a fellow resident of Martha's Vineyard. Future record producer and rapper John Forte befriended Ben and Ben's cousin at music university and became a close family friend, and Simon became his "Mama C" who would later support him and campaign for his freedom when he was jailed for drug possession, eventually getting the remaining seven years of his 14-year sentence pardoned.

Simon briefly owned the night club Hot Tin Roof that was initially attended by wealthy tourists and residents until illustrator Margot Datz suggested through artwork that there should be a better reflection of the island's working-class community, which successfully turned the attendance interclass. Although Simon and Datz moved on to collaborate on Simon's children's books, Ben admitted he has plans to reopen the club someday.

Won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Grammy Award^note specifically the award currently titled as Best Song Written for Visual Media for "Let the River Run" for the movie Working Girl. This made her the first artist to win all three awards as the solo composer, lyricist, and performer of the honored song.

Official website here.

Discography

• Carly Simon (1971)
• Anticipation (1971)
• No Secrets (1972)
• Hotcakes (1974)
• Playing Possum (1975)
• Another Passenger (1976)
• Boys in the Trees (1978)
• Spy (1979)
• Come Upstairs (1980)
• Torch (1981)
• Hello Big Man (1983)
• Spoiled Girl (1985)
• Coming Around Again (1987)
• My Romance (1990)
• Have You Seen Me Lately (1990)
• Letters Never Sent (1994)
• Film Noir (1997)
• The Bedroom Tapes (2000)
• Moonlight Serenade (2005)
• Into White (2007)
• This Kind of Love (2008)
• Never Been Gone (2009)
• Comes in Waves (2026)

Tropes associated with Carly Simon include:

• All Girls Want Bad Boys: The final section of "The Carter Family" is about the narrator missing her ex-boyfriend, who seemed a Loveable Rogue at first but was loud, bitter and embarrassing whenever they left the house. Despite this, she can't help but get nostalgic some nights before she falls asleep over how amazing he was in bed.
• All Women Are Lustful: Noted for having many songs about or including blatant sexual pining to the point Simon's songs are often used as invoked Fair for Its Day examples of the developing second-wave feminist movement in her country.^note Ironically, due to being the daughter of civil rights feminist Andrea Heinemann, Simon was ahead of the social activism and her music turning into its anthems was more a coincidence.
  • "Waited So Long" is partially an apology note from a teenage girl to her (implied) Boyfriend-Blocking Dad that she did the deed with her boyfriend on her birthday ... and had planned to.
    Raise your glasses with a song but don't expect me to be home tonight
    Daddy, I'm sorry, but I've already waited too long.
    I met a boy with eyes of green, the warmest eyes I'd ever seen;
    He gave his lovin' love to me the way I've always heard it would be
  • "Come Upstairs" is the internal dialogue of a woman who's getting impatient waiting for her longtime male friend who drove her home after a party to seduce her. Then the rest of the song is her getting carried away with her fantasy.
  • The first nostalgic memory the narrator of "Menemsha" wistfully tells us is the time she and her boyfriend had rainy-day sex on a pier.
    Peter's on the loose; I'd like to see him again
    I remember when we made love on a jetty in the rain...
  • Let's just say most of Playing Possum and be done with it. Its front cover sets the tone very well.
  • The narrator's ex-boyfriend in "The Carter Family" only had being Good in Bed as his redeemable factor.
  • "Holding Me Tonight" isn't about sleeping in your lover's arms.
    A room with a view ... is in the dark with you
    But that should come as no surprise
  • "Boys In the Trees" is about a teenage girl considering getting dating advice from her sister(s) now she has newfound pangs of frustration and urges—said urges represented as her crushes climbing a metaphorical tree outside her bedroom window to taunt her when she's home—even though no one wants to give her The Talk. Should you be forward with your intentions or should be you be Playing Hard to Get?
    Here I grew guilty and no one was at fault
    Frightened by the power in every innocent thought
    And the silent understanding passing down from daughter to daughter:
    "Let the boys grow in the trees"
    Do you go to them or do you let them come to you?
    Do you stand in back, afraid that you'll intrude,
    Deny yourself and hope someone will see, and live like a flower while the boys grow in the trees?
  • "The Three of Us In the Dark" is about a woman being attracted to two men (implied to have made her feelings clear to both of them) and ending up in a dark room with both. She thinks to herself "But that's taboo!" Yet she can't decide who to pick...
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Although a dirty blonde, takes on a look like this on the No Secrets cover.
• Am I Just a Toy to You?: "Are You Ticklish" is about the narrator trying to suss this out of a man she's finally sharing an intimate scenario with. Something she just did is making him laugh and she wonders if the reaction is genuine or a ploy to sexually conquer her.
  Are you ticklish or did I just hit a funny bone?
  Are you ticklish? Are we really alone?
  Do you like me or am I just hoping for too much?
• Amicable Exes: A notable Like Brother and Sister relationship with Cat Stevens and Robbie Robertson—the former an ex from 1971 and the latter a potential hookup that didn't go anywhere during that time, much to Simon's annoyance—as Simon's social media in the 2010s has included present day photos of them. Stevens even joked in his 2025 memoir that he might be the man of "You're So Vain".
• Awful Wedded Life: "Coming Around Again" talks about a married woman who is almost at her breaking point as she goes about her daily domestic life with her unsupportive husband.
• Big Sister Worship: The child narrator in "My Older Sister", although she's also jealous of her sister's perfectness.
  When she turns the lights out, what does she think about?
  And what does she do in the daylight that makes her so great?
• Black Bra and Panties: Wore a variation of this on her Playing Possum album cover (an undershirt instead of a bra) with knee-length stiletto boots. It became part of her Rock & Roll Hall of Fame display after her induction.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: What Simon's marriage to James Taylor essentially was, according to her. His mental health fluctuating and him self-medicating with heroin^note Taylor had had mental ill-health issues since his teens and had been in and out of mental hospitals throughout his life, so the casual drug use of his peers during his youth became a benefit to him to the point of addiction, despite the life-threatening dangers. made him depressed and unpredictable, and Simon would be there to try and keep him focused and try and get him sober. Sometimes, she gave in and took drugs with him as well (she'd stick with marijuana), and even when their marriage failed, she still spoke highly of him.
• Celebrity Crush:
  • Simon had one on Sean Connery, and she and her sister Lucy later met him on a cruise. Despite dancing with him after dinner, Simon found out a few days later that Lucy had spent the night in Connery's room after rejecting her (and after Simon and Lucy had rejected his threesome offer). This detail wasn't known to the public until Simon's memoir published, which led to the media's snide comments about how Simon definitely wasn't fantasizing about Roger Moore's Bond when she sang "Nobody Does It Better".
  • Mick Jagger was one of Simon's biggest celebrity crushes, and she got an Ascended Fangirl moment when he accepted the offer to sing backing vocals on "You're So Vain". At the time, her brother playfully snarked that she and Jagger looked like Gender Bender versions of each other because of how Simon wore her hair at the time she and Jagger eventually met. In a 2016 interview, Simon said she and Jagger had last met in the early 2000s at a dinner party where she discovered by struggling through eye contact and stammering more than usual that the crush hadn't gone away.
  • Although they'd briefly met before, Simon got one on future husband James Taylor when she saw him in a magazine pictured holding hands with his girlfriend Joni Mitchell. She then turned to her sister Joanna and vowed she'd marry him one day.
• Cool Old Lady:
  • Became this for Janet Jackson, who wanted to sample "You're So Vain" for "Son of a Gun (I Betcha Think This Song Is About You)" and searched the industry to get Simon's permission. But Simon, who loved Jackson's work, telephoned her personally upon finding out and offered to be a Special Guest instead so that Jackson wouldn't have legal trouble with Elektra Records.
  • Simon was one of the few celebrities who was surprisingly tech-savvy during the dawn of the internet that we know and use today, often writing blog posts and replying to fan-mail or viewers' questions on her website in the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s during times when most users were office workers or younger than her kids (and then as old as her grandkids). She wrote the foreword for the revised edition of Mac for Dummies where she thanked the book for helping her understand how her new Macintosh computer worked.
• Cover Version:
  • Her four albums of torch songs.
  • Let It Snow, a Christmas Songs album.
  • "Night Owl" and "You Can Close Your Eyes" were originally by James Taylor.
  • This Kind of Love included two covers of songs initially by her children: "Island" (by Ben, under The Ben Taylor Band) and "When We're Together" (by Sally). Into White has the cover "Quiet Evening", originally by Ben's friend David Saw who was a go-to collaborator at the time.
  • An Into White single was her cover of The Beatles' "Blackbird". The album also includes "Oh Suzanna", and English folk song "Scarborough Fair".
• Creator Thumbprint:
  • Mentions of rivers feature a lot in Simon's music, with the songs "Like a River" and "Let the River Run" being the most blatant (thanks to a river being name-dropped in the titles).
  • Simon was once engaged to English writer William Donaldson, dated Cat Stevens and later lived in England during the recording and final production of No Secrets, and judging by mentions of boiling kettles and tea drinking in songs from albums after it, her time in the social climate was extremely impactful. In "After the Storm", she also refers to the duvet as an "eiderdown", a colloquially British description for a duvet specifically stuffed with eider feathers.
  • Sailboats and fishing might be mentioned, which is a likely reflection of Simon's Patriotic Fervor for Martha's Vineyard. Music videos might include outdoor footage or B-Roll at the beach or a pier or on a boat.
• Did the Earth Move for You, Too?: "After the Storm" uses many natural disaster imagery to describe the narrator's recent sex with her boyfriend. However, the use also implies the deed was the result of a Slap-Slap-Kiss situation.
  Clothes strewn around the room;
  Looks like a wind swept through
  Made a wild man out of you;
  And doesn't anger turn you on?
• The Diss Track: Her song "You're So Vain" is a bouncily sarcastic hit about an egotistical male friend with a penchant for homewrecking and globetrotting hedonism. After several decades, Simon finally admitted that the song is at least partially about Warren Beatty. She would later allow it to be adapted for an anti-Donald Trump ad during the 2016 election campaign.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: "Attitude Dancing". The title implies Simon's made a Dance Sensation song, but the verses mention acting, posing and positions, letting go of ego and "taking on a new role" a lot... Here's how the song begins:
  There's a new kind of dancing that's gonna be the rage
  You just leave yourself behind like an actor on a stage
  Cop a different pose from the pose you're in
  Shine a different attitude from underneath your skin:
  Attitude dancing
• Doesn't Know Their Lover: Inverted with "We Have No Secrets" to the point it irritates the narrator, who implies that the "we tell each other everything" aspect of their relationship includes their lover mentioning past crushes and/or sexual encounters and flings that have made the narrator insecure.
  We share a cast of characters from A to Z
  We know each other's fantasies
  And though we know each other better when we explore,
  Sometimes I wish— Often, I wish
  That I never knew some of those secrets of yours
  [...]
  In the name of honesty— In the name of what is fair,
  You always answer my questions ... but they don't always answer my prayers
• Everyone Is Christian at Christmas: Downplayed with her Let It Snow cover album; Simon's half-Ashkenazi because of her father and was raised Catholic, but a tiny handful of interviews have revealed that this didn't stop Simon's family incorporating Jewish culture into their lives, notably mentioning in her foreword for the book Vineyard Folk that one of the first songs she learned on a Martha's Vineyard vacation with her family was "Hava Nagila" when she was fifteen.
• Face on the Cover: Every album, and sometimes even on the back.
• Family Business: Along with Sibling Team below, Simon's family has helped her out and vice versa. Her brother Peter photographed a few of her album covers and liner notes backgrounds; her daughter Sally took over Uncle Peter for some others and was a backing singer at the Queen Mary 2 concert; and her son Ben has been a session musician, recording engineer and producer on some of her 2000s albums who even convinced her to re-record her songs for Never Been Gone.
• Friend to All Children: Published music for children's movies and television, and published five children's books between 1989 and 1997.
• Genre-Busting: Her songs are all over the map, with elements of rock, pop, easy listening, and soul in various ratios.
• Gentle Giant: In her memoir, Simon revealed that she invoked being a Genki Girl throughout school to cope with childhood trauma and to distract her peers from her reputation as being the shy girl who "couldn't read", which got her a class award for being the nicest girl in school. The Fun Personified reputation continued when Simon became famous (and got taller) which is probably why the Out-of-Character Moment rumor that she tried to beat up The Pretenders' Chrissy Hynde spread like wildfire through the tabloids.
• Handicapped Badass: Had a stammer as a child (it later dampened down as she matured but known to come back during stressful situations) and then later received a dyslexia diagnosis, yet became a successful, award-winning singer-songwriter with one of the most celebrated pop songs of the 1970s. She once explained she was able to write "Anticipation" from the very beginning as if the universe had implanted the completed song into her brain.
  Lucy: But [my sister's] stutter made this extraordinary thing happen. When Carly got stuck on words, she had to find other ways to say things.
  Simon: An original vocabulary.
  Lucy: Which you’ve done in your lyrics. She found deeper ways to say things.
• Holding in Laughter: A few moments in "Safe and Sound" as the narrator lists strange international news and scandals that are (or could be) happening that don't matter as long as her lover is prepared to face it by her side.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: Discussed in "Boys In the Trees" and played straight with "Waited So Long".
• Hypocritical Humor: The fact that "You're So Vain" is written in the second person means that logically, whoever "you" is, it is "about you". That doesn't mean it's not vain to assume you are that person, though... (unless it's really about three different people.)
• Incompatible Orientation: Simon's second marriage ended because of this. On the surface, it was the plot twist from a sudden epiphany to being Happily Married for almost twenty years, but ex-husband Jim revealed in his memoir that the stress of being an Armored Closet Gay during the AIDS epidemic took a toll on the marriage and it turned into an Awful Wedded Life where Simon gave him a You Need to Get Laid ultimatum and Jim used the Permission to Cheat to make a detour from the agreed massage parlor to sneak into a gay club.^note At the time, Jim saw himself as gay men's "token straight friend" as he'd been friends with many in his twenties long before he met Simon who he became madly attracted to when they met and married, so no sexual encounters happened at the gay club as his awakening hadn't happened yet. Eventually, Jim realized why he was acting this way and the two became Amicable Exes, telling LGBTQ magazine The Advocate that Simon being his accidental Closet Key made their friendship stronger.
  Jim: (in response to the hypothetical situation of readers assuming his and Simon's marriage was lavender) If I were looking for a beard, Carly Simon would be a very poor choice. She is smart, sophisticated, and so suspicious. She was brought up on lies in her childhood and had developed a keen sonar about being lied to. Our initial attraction was so intense on all levels. If I ever was sure about not being gay it was during those first years with Carly. My physical and emotional attraction to her was the most powerful I have ever felt in my life. And then there was how we got along in our friendship. We were in so many ways a perfect fit. It is one of the reasons that coming out was so difficult. Why would we end a relationship that worked on so many important levels?
• Irony: Once considered America's Singer-Songwriter Queen when she married "The King" James Taylor, but "You're So Vain" is the only notable song solely written by her that the public remembers, whereas the rest of her pop song legacy were either written for her or co-written.
• Last Note Nightmare: "That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be", already a rather dark and cynical Anti-Love Song, ends with her voice suddenly double-tracked and echoing off very eerily.
• Let's Duet: With Snake Hips Dean, her uncle Peter, on his songs "Four or Five Times" and "So the Bluebirds and the Blackbirds Got Together".
• Live Album: Live at Grand Central and Live at Martha's Vineyard, and they also had concert movies available digitally and on DVD. Interestingly, the latter's CD was also named Greatest Hits Live!.
• Location Song: "Menemsha", a silly love song about a Sickeningly Sweethearts relationship between the narrator and a working fisherman in the Martha's Vineyard district of the same name.
• Lyrical Dissonance: This is very close to being one of Simon's signature songwriting techniques.
  • "That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be" is a song with seemingly happy lyrics about beating the bad relationship odds common in the narrator's environment that dated back to childhood between her parents, but a mournful, extremely ambivalent tune that indicates she doesn't really expect to come out on top.
  • "Anticipation" (written about a fling with Cat Stevens) has a distinctly triumphal tune but the words are about pre-first-date jitters.
  • "Better Not Tell Her" sounds like an angry rant from a jealous ex, but it closes on a desperately sad and lonely note.
  • "Jesse" is a deliriously happy song about wanting to see a man who is absolutely no good for her.
  • "You Belong To Me" is a jazzy, sax-laden, almost seductive song about a woman who's terrified of losing her cheating lover.
  • "Haven't Got Time for the Pain" is one of Simon's many Silly Love Songs but the chorus sounds like a Survival Mantra:
    I haven't got time for the pain
    I haven't got room for the pain
    I haven't the need for the pain
    Not since I've known you
  • "All I Want Is You" is an uptempo soft-rock song with lyrics that could be interpreted either as the narrator finding quarrels with her lover sexually arousing, or being a brainwashed abuse victim suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
  • Too many Intercourse with You and Seduction Lyric songs to count that sound like gentle, twee folk music. "Come Upstairs" is a rare example of a song that plays the frustrated urgency straight.
  • And then there's her cover of "Eensy-Weensy Spider", which serves as a reprise of the title track on Coming Around Again, which is a song about a frustrated housewife living her life in a fog ... and it has her kids singing backup.
• Ms. Fanservice: As a tall, beautiful woman with high cheekbones (who frequently got Aroused by Their Voice comments in review write-ups), attention like this caught onto Simon almost immediately.^note Mixed Ancestry Is Attractive most likely plays into this as well; Simon is both half-Ashkenazi via her father and a tenth African via her maternal grandmother (she later suspected her father's standoffish treatment of her was because she was the only child in the family lightly tanned with frizzy hair and a big nose, which could've made the family attract bigotry). In her memoir, she recalled a record label CEO saying he didn't know what to do with "that Jewish girl". Despite her shyness, Simon played into it at times, notoriously on the front cover of Playing Possum which was a candid photo depicting a Lingerie Scene of her on her knees, and for her single "Why" where she is wearing Absolute Cleavage leopard print with her frizzy hair is styled to be even more blown out and tousled as she gives the camera a threatening gaze. There's also a Sexy Soaked Shirt photo of her by the sea at sunset that's extremely Not Safe for Work where her wet tanktop under her open shirt fails to hide that she's Going Commando.
• The Not-Remix: A few of her 2000s albums include re-recordings of songs from thirty years ago that weirdly aren't advertized as newer versions. When her music became available on streaming services in the late 2010s, some songs were re-released with new remastering.
• Odd Friendship:
  • The godmother of John Forte (his Mama C, as he called her), a rapper best known for performing with and producing for The Fugees. Simon and son Ben helped him get the other half of his prison sentence pardoned by President George W. Bush when he was jailed for 14 years for cocaine possession with the intent to sell, arguing Forte wasn't given a fair trial. He then relocated to Martha's Vineyard, married and had two children, and became an acoustic guitar-playing Singer-Songwriter who helped co-produce the Simon family's music between releasing his Genre Shifting own. Sadly, he died in January 2026 from a seizure heightened from flu.
  • She was once interviewed by "longtime friend" (as advertized) Alec Baldwin for a podcast, a highly respected actor whose controversial personal life overshadows his work, for many audiences.
  • Natasha Bedingfield and Sara Bareilles are famous family friends who have been to family jam sessions at her home and collaborated on songs yet to be released. Simon picked Bareilles to lead her Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony.
  • Simon exploited and invoked this with her memoir Touched By the Sun, which told stories from her friendship with the country's former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
• One-Man Song:
  • The songs "His Friends Are More Than Fond of Robin" and "Legend In Your Own Time" are about two men the narrator knows who have Magnetic Hero reputations in their neighborhood. In the former, the narrator suffers from Loving a Shadow and is too shy to approach him because everyone is more than fond of Robin, whereas the man of the latter is too unconventional to keep a romantic relationship and the narrator (whose relationship to the man is unspecified, but can be inferred as either a friend, acquaintance or bystander) isn't surprised because the rest of the world hasn't caught up with him.
  • "Fisherman's Song" is about a woman who had a fling with a fisherman who promised her the world when they went fishing together until he broke up with her and made her move out because he valued his privacy. Heartbroken and confused, she turns into a Stalker with a Crush who sneaks into his cabin every night to lie next to him for a few hours before kissing his eyelids goodbye and climbing out the window at sunrise in hope that somewhere in his deep sleep he still knows she cares about him.
• Ordinary People's Music Video: The video for "Why", where Simon interacts with the public as she dances and sings throughout the city.
• Parental Love Song:
  • The "Love of My Life" song was written in dedication to her children; Ben shows up in the music video with an acoustic guitar. "Hold Out Your Heart" is a You Are Not Alone about how they don't need to hide their problems by acting recklessly (especially Ben, whose verse is about late-night surfing in the winter after a break-up that sounds like it was Very Loosely Based on a True Story) and can tell her anything.
  • "Julie Through the Glass" is one for her niece Julie, who Lucy had after The Simon Sisters disbanded.
• Performance Anxiety: Stage fright so extreme, Simon even got stressed at the airports waiting to board flights that took her to venues (not helping already having a fear of flying). Notably, her only performance on Saturday Night Live was one of the rare live Special Guest performances back then (and even in the present) that was actually pre-recorded when the audience hadn't arrived yet. When she had to tour, she made her band members take turns spanking her bottom before they stepped onstage so the stinging would distract her. At one concert, she admitted to the audience she was having a panic attack so a few were allowed on the stage to support her, getting permission to hug and pat her down to keep her calm.
• Perpetual Smiler: Often pictured smiling, grinning or smirking in photos and videos to the point one could classify her dimples as Recurring Characters. Of the Playful Cat Smile variety (although, a magazine write-up once described it as "hyena-like").
• Pop-Star Composer: After making the theme songs for Working Girl and The Spy Who Loved Me, Simon notably became this for the Winnie the Pooh movies Piglet's Big Movie and wrote five songs for Pooh's Heffalump Movie, and also wrote and performed the theme song for The Little Twins.
• Prefers Going Barefoot: If there's a promotional photo or footage of Simon in a wooded or grassy area, she'll be barefoot. Played straight with the Into White front cover where she is standing in her backyard.
• Pretty Fly for a White Guy:
  • The reggae song "Da Bat (Fly In Me Face)", which she also wrote. It also included backing vocals from then-husband James Taylor and Orleans band member John Hall.
  • invoked Her feature on Janet Jackson's "Son of a Gun (I Betcha Think This Song Is About You)" has her rapping (although, it's more a mix between singing, improv and Spoken Word). Despite the song's eventual popularity, critics said her inserts gave some of them second-hand embarrassment.
• Really Gets Around:
  • The narrator confronts a guy like this in "Love Out In the Street" to tell him she doesn't care about the reputation his behavior has given him and wouldn't mind being his next object of desire.
  • The titular fisherman of "Fisherman's Song" is said to have this reputation by the woman narrating as she was the latest to "fall under his spell".
• Repurposed Pop Song: "Anticipation" was immediately used by Heinz for their American ketchup commercials.
• The Reveal: She's only given up clues about who the song "You're So Vain" is about. On November 18th 2015, she revealed the second verse is about Warren Beatty, meaning the other verses are about other men as well.
• Riches to Rags: Despite being the child of the co-founder of a successful book publishing house, Simon received sixty thousand dollars when her father died (from Simon & Schuester shares, not his will) and the money soon dried up.^note She spent it on therapy for her childhood trauma. Simon later said that many detractors assumed she was a socialite culturally appropriating folk music but she had to work several jobs after finishing her studies to make a living, including a Girl Friday and a night club singer for jazz bands in rundown clubs and bars (and even got sick from being a workaholic). She explained her parents had encouraged her and her siblings to work for their lives instead of living off potential inheritance.
• Self-Titled Album: Her 1971 debut.
• Sex God: Often encounters a man like this in songs, such as "I've Got to Have You", "Nobody Does It Better", "After the Storm", "The Carter Family" (against her better judgement), and "You're So Vain" is about calling out the misbehavior of one.
• Sexophone: Often used on her most suggestive songs. "After the Storm" has two saxophone solos.
• Sexy Surfacing Shot: The "You Know What To Do" music video has a shot of her dramatically surfacing out of the water in a Male Gaze shot after a swim at a pool, and then a similar shot occurs as she climbs the ladder.
• Sibling Team: Simon with her two older sisters Lucy (older) and Joanna (eldest). She and Lucy were a folk music duo in the 1960s and Lucy and Joanna did backing vocals on Simon's albums, and vice versa. Meanwhile, baby brother Peter became a photographer and took many photos for all his sisters (he took the Anticipation cover). Simon also chose him to write the foreword of her official songwriting book release Carly Simon Complete and he even interviewed her,^note According to Peter, the "interview" was actually different conversations molded together where Simon joked that the reason she and their sisters didn't fight was because they had different vocal ranges that stopped them from outshining each other.
• Silly Love Songs: Simon wasn't above making a song or two like this.
  • "Holding Me Tonight" is a known example with a music video of Simon doing a Happy Dance with the band and frequent B-roll footage of her Laugh of Love, in which its bridge is about the narrator's delight of you finally inviting her over and giving herself a "No Peeking!" Request so you don't have to as she rushes her clothes off so your lingering embarrassment over your untidy room doesn't kill the mood.
  • "Menemsha" stars the narrator and her fisherman boyfriend Peter in the titular seaside district and details their romantic dates with their Shipper on Deck friends on the beach and in the park during their free-times where everyone danced and drank a lot of beer. In fact, their friends are such passionate fans, they have to intentionally be Making Love in All the Wrong Places in secluded locations like a jetty on a rainy day.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: Her minor 1988 hit "All I Want Is You" seems to be describe a relationship that is built on this, with lyrics that suggest the narrator finds sparring (at least verbally if not physically) sexually arousing. She also declares she doesn't want a polite, timid man "who tiptoes upstairs."
• Soprano and Gravel:
  • The gravel in The Simon Sisters to Lucy's soprano. Or "naturally good baritone", as she put it in the foreword for the Compilation Re-release album's liner notes.
  • Zig-zagged when performing with James Taylor as she's naturally the gravel but they alternated frequently during duets.
  • Subverted when performing "I Can't Thank You Enough" with Ben Taylor as they both take on gravel.
  • Did the soprano part to David Crosby and Jimmy Webb's lower parts when they performed The Beach Boys' "In My Room" for their Brian Wilson tribute TV special.
  • The soprano on her two duets with Snake Hips Dean.
• Special Guest:
  • Janet Jackson sampled and interpolated "You're So Vain" in her 2001 song "Son of a Gun," with Simon also contributing new vocals to the track. The result was Simon's first Billboard Top 40 single in 15 years (and her last to date until 2025's "Coming Around Again" remake with Alanis Morissette).
  • Performed on Gorillaz's "Ticker Tape".
  • On John Forte's "Been There, Done That".
  • On Jimmy Webb's "Easy For You to Say That".
• Spoken Word in Music: The intro of "Menemsha" is a fisherman telling Peter, the narrator's fisherman boyfriend, to pay attention to how he secures their boat after work. Then the fisherman realizes and lightly teases Peter about clearly being distracted because he's daydreaming about the narrator again and is rushing safety protocol to visit her.
• Statuesque Stunner: Stands at 5'10". Also a case of Big Little Sister as she's taller than her two older sisters.
• Take That!:
  • "You're So Vain" is the most well-known example. Also "Better Not Tell Her", in a much more tragic vein.
  • "Happy Birthday" is basically a Growing Up Sucks song that reads as a stealthy rant about societal expectations of "looking after yourself" in your middle age to the point you're a boring person to everyone else, on paper. Supposedly, you don't smoke, drink alcohol, want a suntan, make meals from scratch, and you don't even want to flirt with someone you're attracted to.
    We've got brilliant excuses for having no fun
    So just blow out the candles
    Happy Birthday
  • Was on the receiving end of one from ex-husband James Taylor. She gave him an ultimatum: cut back on his recording and touring to spend more time with her and the kids, or their marriage is over. The title of Taylor's next album? Dad Loves His Work. They were divorced soon after.
  • "You Belong to Me" inverts this with a Bait-and-Switch Comment where it sounds like the narrator will insult her cheating lover at first, but it's actually a verbal Indignant Slap.
    You don't have to prove to me you're beautiful to strangers!
    I've got loving eyes of my own!
• Theme Tune: "Nobody Does It Better", for the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. Includes a Title Drop and some cutesy innuendo about "keeping all my secrets safe tonight".
• Third Wheel: "Two Hot Girls (On a Hot Summer Night)" becomes this, after the narrator fails to meet a man (or a potential hookup) like her friend Jenny did when they decide to explore their town's nightlife one summer evening. The narrator feels worse because she is the one who points out a man they know yet the man has a She Cleans Up Nicely reaction to Jenny instead.
• Tomboyish Name: Downplayed and defied; Simon's name is the feminine version of "Carl". Before she was born, her father hoped she'd be a boy, justifying it as the natural completion to a "Rule of Three".^note He most likely meant Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking. But when Carl turned out to be a girl, her parents "put a Y" on the end. Fortunately for Simon's dad, Simon would be followed by her brother Peter a few years later.^note Simon noted in her memoir that although daddy eventually got his wish, she always felt a resentful streak from him throughout her childhood, and he sometimes even forgot to wish her goodnight at bedtime. Despite this, Peter has referred to Simon as Carl in an interview, which can be inferred that this has been an Affectionate Nickname either from only him or an official one among family and friends.
• Torch Song: Her album Torch is a Break-Up Song Concept Album full of song covers from this era of American standards. Notably, this album released shortly before her and James Taylor's divorce announcement.
• Trope Codifier: Considered one for American Soft Rock and yacht rock.
• Trope Maker: invoked For the clause of never revealing who the Celebrity Break-Up Song is about, thanks to "You're So Vain". Simon's induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame included a performance of the song by Olivia Rodrigo, and would've also included Alanis Morissette if she hadn't turned it down — two female singers who also became household names thanks to an instantly successful single ("Driver's License" for Rodrigo, "You Oughta Know" for Morissette) about a possible real-life ex suspected to be a celebrity by listeners that they've never revealed the identity of.
• Uncommon Time: Sometimes shifted between time signatures throughout songs. Simon eventually stopped in the Turn of the Millennium, telling The Huffington Post in 2008 it became boring and hard to maintain. "Menemsha" notably has a 5/4 chorus but a Common Time verse and bridge structure.
• Unstoppable Mailman: In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, the United States Postal Service released a commercial featuring Simon's song "Let the River Run" that reassured the nation that, despite everything that had happened, the people of the United States could still count on them. It's actually pretty heartwarming.
• Wait for Your Date: Downplayed with "Anticipation" where no one is late for the date or being Stood Up but the narrator is nervous over how the date might go. Interestingly, the Real Life Writes the Plot part of the story plays this trope straight as Cat Stevens was late to his and Simon's date, and Simon used the delay to write the song.
• Wham Episode: The title track of Playing Possum. An album mostly full of songs about getting it (or trying to get it) on ends with a song about the aftermath of the narrator and an old friend having to go into hiding after starting a newspaper business that exposed a Government Conspiracy. They haven't seen each other in a long time (to the point it's easy for the audience to infer decades) and the narrator wonders how their old partner got along with his new life and identity.
• Wham Line:
  • At the end of "Our First Day Together", despite the implied days or weeks of the narrator being a relationship, their lover confesses having a Love Epiphany in the final verse.
    Knowing me the way you do...
    Then why did you just say that our first day together...
    Was today?
  • "The Right Thing To Do" sets itself up as the narrator's Love Confession and convincing who they're confessing to that they should try out being together. Then the song's outro includes the ad-lib "Even though you're ten thousand miles away..."
• Word Salad Lyrics: The famously cryptic "I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee" from "You're So Vain". She's explained that she took the imagery from an incident where she saw reflections of clouds in her cup of coffee on an airplane flight, but has left the metaphorical meaning of the line open to interpretation.
• Yandere: Played with in "You Belong To Me" and "Better Not Tell Her", which could quite easily be about the same relationship, a decade apart. In both cases, there's begging, denial, and anger, but in neither one does the singer tip over into Ax-Crazy. There's some heavy Sanity Slippage in "You Belong To Me", though.