Carly Elisabeth Simon (born June 25, 1943) 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), "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.
After a brief stint with her sister Lucy Simon as the Simon Sisters, she found great success as a solo artist with her 1971 self-titled debut album Carly Simon, which 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). Her second album, Anticipation, followed later that year and became an even greater success, earning her another Grammy nomination and later being certified Gold by the RIAA. She achieved international fame the following year with her third album, No Secrets, which sat at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for five weeks, was certified Platinum, and spawned the worldwide hit "You're So Vain", for which she received three Grammy nominations, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Simon's 1977 worldwide hit "Nobody Does It Better", the theme song to the Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, garnered her another Grammy nomination, and has been ranked one of the greatest Bond themes. 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.
Simon has amassed 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. AllMusic called her "one of the quintessential singer-songwriters of the '70s". She has a contralto vocal range, and has cited Odetta as a significant influence. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1994. In 1995 and 1998, respectively, she received the Boston Music Awards Lifetime Achievement and a Berklee College of Music Honorary Doctor of Music Degree. She was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for "You're So Vain" in 2004 and awarded the ASCAP Founders Award in 2012.