Singer-songwriter Carly Simon, who defined confessional pop in the 1970s and turned personal grievance into an enduring anthem with “You’re So Vain,” announced Monday that she has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and was also treated for a form of skin cancer. The 83-year-old artist made the disclosure in a lengthy written statement, ending a stretch of public quiet that had left admirers wondering where she had gone.
In her own words, Simon said the diagnosis had not come easily to accept. She wrote that it took her time to understand the condition, adjust to it and decide how much she wished to share publicly. The frankness of the letter — by turns clinical, wry and unsparing — reads less like a celebrity press release than a reckoning delivered on her own terms.
Simon did not say exactly when she received the diagnosis. She traced the beginning of her decline to arthritis in both knees and one hip, which required three joint replacements. But the mobility problems kept mounting. She described struggling to rise from low chairs and deep couches without a steadying arm, and said there were eventually stretches when she could not walk without considerable help.
A Diagnosis at the Mayo Clinic
Sensing that something larger was at work, Simon underwent an extensive evaluation at the Mayo Clinic, where she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. The condition is a progressive neurological disorder that affects movement and currently has no cure, according to the Mayo Clinic. Its hallmark symptoms include tremors, stiffness, slowed movement, impaired balance and changes in speech, and medications can ease some of them without halting the underlying progression.
Simon said she has begun treatment, and that her medication helps with stiffness and other symptoms. Still, she stressed, the severity of the disorder rises and falls without warning. Some days leave her too exhausted to get moving at all; others grant her enough room to work, think and feel like herself. There is no orderly rhythm to it, she wrote — the illness does not consult her calendar before deciding what kind of day she will have.
She was careful to describe how far the condition can reach beyond the body. Parkinson’s, she explained, can bring anxiety, depression, exhaustion and apathy. That last symptom she found the strangest to convey. She likened it to lying motionless like a starfish drying in the sun while nothing inside urges her to get up, to read, to sing or to call anyone. It is not sadness or laziness, she wrote, but something more like the part of the brain that issues invitations to life having temporarily misplaced its guest list.
Skin Cancer and a New Record
Compounding the ordeal, Simon disclosed that doctors had removed basal cell carcinoma from her face, a common form of skin cancer. The surgery to remove it altered her appearance and, she said, deepened her isolation and stoked her self-consciousness. With characteristic irony, she noted that she has always been harsher on her own looks than anyone could imagine — a confession she paired with a nod to the song that made her famous.
Simon said that working on “Comes in Waves,” her first album in 18 years, helped give structure to difficult days and provided a creative outlet that didn’t require leaving home.
Simon said her Parkinson’s diagnosis puts her in the company of several well-known people managing the condition publicly, including “Back to the Future” star Michael J. Fox, a leading advocate for research and awareness.
A Career That Shaped an Era
Simon rose to prominence in the 1970s and became one of the era’s signature voices, blending literary lyricism with sharp emotional candor. She has won multiple Grammy Awards throughout her career and also wrote “Let the River Run,” and she joined the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022. She lives on Martha’s Vineyard and shares two children, Sally, 52, and Ben, 49, with her former husband, musician James Taylor.
Simon did not soften her assessment of what lies ahead. She called Parkinson’s difficult, frustrating and at times frightening, and refused to romanticize it as any kind of gift. Yet she framed the disclosure not as a farewell but as an accounting of where she is. She said she is still learning how to live with the condition without feeling she has surrendered something essential — still writing, singing, imagining, laughing, worrying, remembering and, in her telling, occasionally getting trapped in an overstuffed chair.