Carly Simon, the songwriter most famous for “You’re So Vain,” revealed to her fans on Monday that she’s been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
“So many people have written to me, kindly wondering about my relative silence, asking how I am and what I have been doing,” Simon wrote in a letter to her audience obtained by People magazine. “The truth is, I’ve been learning how to live with Parkinson’s disease.”
Simon, 83, said the decline in her health first came when arthritis in her knees and hip forced her to get those three joints replaced “with delicate bouquets of metal and plastic.” Her mobility continued to worsen.
“Eventually, there were periods when I could not walk without considerable help,” Simon noted. “My family and I knew that something more was going on. After an extensive evaluation at the Mayo Clinic, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.”
Simon explained that she has taken the time to live with the illness.
“There is no tidy or predictable schedule to the illness. It does not consult my calendar before deciding what kind of day I am going to have,” Simon said. “You can find yourself lying there like a starfish drying in the sun, arms pointing in all directions, while nothing inside is telling you to get up, read, watch, write, sing, call someone, or do much of anything at all,” she continued.
“I do not consider Parkinson’s a gift or a blessing,” Simon added. “It is neither. It is difficult, frustrating, and sometimes frightening. I am still learning how to live with it and how to accept it without feeling that I have surrendered something essential.”
Along with adjusting to life with Parkinson’s, Simon underwent surgery for basal cell carcinoma, a form of skin cancer, on her face.
“The cancer was removed, but the surgery affected my appearance and made me more self-conscious about being seen in public,” she said. “I have always been more critical of my appearance than anyone else could possibly imagine (check out the irony of having written ‘You’re So Vain.’), and this gave my inner critic quite a lot of new material.”
Despite all the complications she has faced, Simon has assured her fans, “I have not stopped living, and I have not stopped working.”
In her letter, Simon announced her new album, Comes in Waves, her first original full-length album since 2008. It will include fragments of songs that Simon wrote down and tucked away throughout her musical career.
Simon ended her letter thanking her family, friends, and medical staff who have helped her through her medical experiences.
Simon won two Grammys during her career, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in November 2022. Simon has 206,000 followers on Instagram and over 6.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
One of Simon’s last public appearances occurred in October 2019, when she promoted “Touched by the Sun: My Friendship with Jackie,” a memoir about her friendship with former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Her last public performance occurred in March 2018 at Carnegie Hall.
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