page_title: Carly Simon
section_title: 1980s
hierarchical_section_title: Carly Simon / 1980s
caption_attribution_description: English: Carly Simon on Martha's Vineyard. A beautiful face with a beauty-filled voice.
context_page_description: Carly Elisabeth Simon is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and children's author. She first rose to fame in the 1970s with a string of hit records; her 13 Top 40 U.S. hits include "Anticipation", "You Belong to Me", "Coming Around Again", and her four Gold certified singles "Jesse", "Mockingbird", "You're So Vain", and "Nobody Does It Better" from the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me.
  After a brief stint with her sister Lucy Simon as duo group 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". Her second album, Anticipation, followed later that year and became an even greater success, earning Simon another Grammy nomination and later being certified Gold by the RIAA.
context_section_description: In 1980, Simon signed with Elektra's sibling label Warner Bros. Records and released her ninth studio album, Come Upstairs. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during a show to promote the album, Simon collapsed onstage from exhaustion. She subsequently performed considerably less throughout the 1980s. From that album, Simon scored another million-selling U.S. Gold single with the hit "Jesse", which peaked at No. 11 and remained on the charts for nearly six months. After the major chart success of "Jesse", Simon's singles became generally less successful in the mid 1980s, although most of them did well on Adult Contemporary radio formats. Simon also contributed the song "Be With Me" to the 1980 album In Harmony: A Sesame Street Record, which was produced by her sister Lucy and Lucy's husband, David Levine. Simon can also be heard on the song "In Harmony", along with other members of the Simon/Taylor families. Carly and Lucy contributed a "Simon Sisters" song—which was called "Maryanne"—to the 1982 follow-up album In Harmony 2, which was also produced by Lucy and her husband. Both albums won Grammy Awards for Best Album for Children.
  Torch (1981) was an album of melancholy jazz standards, recorded long before it became fashionable for rock artists to delve into the "great American songbook". It peaked outside the top 40 on album charts (at No. 50) but remained on the charts for nearly six months and subsequently became one of her best-selling catalogue albums. The album was well-received critically, and featured one original song by Simon, "From The Heart", as well as a cover of Stephen Sondheim's "Not a Day Goes By" from his musical Merrily We Roll Along. Also in 1981, Carly Simon was the second female solo artist to be featured on MTV's first day of the air in her video for "Vengeance" (Pat Benatar was the first female solo artist to appear on MTV, and Juice Newton was the third).
  In 1982, she sang the Nile Rodgers & Bernard Edwards-produced single "Why", from the soundtrack to the film Soup for One. It was a top ten hit in the U.K., and successful throughout Europe. Although "Why" stalled at No. 74 in the U.S., the song became a mellow classic in the aftermath of its being picked up to be covered and sampled by different artists from around 1989 onward. She had another UK success with the single "Kissing with Confidence", a song from the 1983 album Dancing For Mental Health by Will Powers (a pseudonym for photographer Lynn Goldsmith). Simon was the uncredited singer of the song co-written and mixed by Todd Rundgren.
  In 1983, she made her last album for Warner, Hello Big Man, but this also suffered from disappointing sales; it did receive positive critical recognition. The lead single from the album, "You Know What to Do", peaked at No. 83 on the Pop singles chart, and Simon filmed a music video for it at her home on Martha's Vineyard, MA. That same year, Simon performed on two albums, The Perfect Stranger by Jesse Colin Young (singing on the track "Fight For It" with Young) and Wonderland by Nils Lofgren (singing on the track "Lonesome Ranger" with Lofgren). By this time, her contract with Warner Bros. had ended. In 1985, she signed with Epic Records and made one album for them, Spoiled Girl. The album yielded two singles, "Tired of Being Blonde" and "My New Boyfriend", with only the former charting. The album was commercially unsuccessful and her contract with Epic was cancelled.
  In 1986, Simon signed with Arista Records and soon rebounded from her career slump. Her first album for Arista, Coming Around Again (1987), gave Simon another international hit with the title track (which was featured in the film Heartburn), returning her to the Billboard Pop Top 20 and the UK Top 10 (it also garnered her a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance).
  The Coming Around Again album also featured the Top 10 Adult Contemporary hits "Give Me All Night", "The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of", "All I Want Is You" (which featured Roberta Flack on backing vocals), and a cover of "As Time Goes By" (featuring Stevie Wonder on harmo
caption: 1980s publicity photo.
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