Singer-songwriter Carly Simon, best known for the hit “You’re So Vain,” revealed Monday that she has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
“So many people have written to me lately wondering why I’ve been relatively quiet,” the 83-year-old singer said in a statement published by People magazine. “They’ve asked how I am and what I’m doing. The truth is that I’m learning how to live with Parkinson’s disease.”
Carly Simon
(Photo: Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)
“It took me time to process the diagnosis, adjust to it and decide how much I wanted to share publicly,” she continued. “Parkinson’s disease manifests differently in every person, and it can be unpredictable. There are days when I’m so tired that I can’t get the day moving at all. On other days, it gives me a little more freedom to move, think, work and feel like myself again.”
Simon said there were periods when she could not walk without significant assistance.
“My family and I realized something was happening, and after an extensive series of tests, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s,” she said.
Alongside the disease’s physical effects, Simon said she is also coping with “anxiety, depression, exhaustion and apathy.”
“That is one of the hardest things to explain,” she said. “It isn’t simply sadness or laziness. It is as though the part of the brain that sends invitations to take part in life has temporarily lost the guest list.”
Simon also revealed that she was diagnosed with a form of skin cancer and underwent surgery to remove a tumor while receiving treatment for Parkinson’s.
“The cancer was removed, but the surgery affected my appearance and made me feel much more self-conscious when I go outside,” she said. “I have always been more critical of my appearance than anyone could imagine, which is ironic considering that I wrote ‘You’re So Vain,’ and this situation gave my inner critic plenty of new material.”
Although Simon’s last public appearance was in 2018, she stressed that she had continued working and recently completed a new album titled “Comes in Waves.”
“Working on the music gave shape to days that did not always have one,” she wrote. “It gave me somewhere to go without having to leave the room. It reminded me that illness can change your life without becoming your whole life.”
“I do not see Parkinson’s as a gift or a blessing,” she added. “It is neither. It is a difficult, frustrating and sometimes frightening disease. I am still learning how to live with it and how to accept it without feeling that I have given up something essential.”
Simon concluded: “Today I move more slowly, lean on others more than I used to and have learned to accept that every day looks a little different. But I am still here.”
Born in New York to a Jewish father, Simon became one of the most prominent singer-songwriters of the early 1970s. Her father, Richard L. Simon, was a businessman and co-founder of the publishing house Simon & Schuster, while her mother, Andrea Heinemann Simon, was a Catholic singer and civil rights activist.
Simon’s best-known songs include “You’re So Vain,” “Anticipation” and “Nobody Does It Better,” the theme song for the 10th James Bond film, “The Spy Who Loved Me.”
Over the course of her career, she won two Grammy Awards, an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for “Let the River Run” from the film “Working Girl.” She was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.