You're So Vain singer Carly Simon reveals Parkinson's disease and skin cancer diagnoses

Singer-songwriter says face surgery and diagnosis lead her to 'withdraw from public view'

Carly Simon says she’s finally ready to speak out about why she’s gone quiet in recent years.

The singer who shot to fame in the 1970s with a string of hits that included You're So Vain and Nobody Does It Better has revealed she’s been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, while quietly battling basal cell carcinoma, a form of skin cancer.

"So many people have written to me, kindly wondering about my relative silence, asking how I am and what I have been doing," said the 83-year-old American singer-songwriter in a statement published by People on Monday. "The truth is, I’ve been learning how to live with Parkinson’s disease."

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Simon explained that her "problems began" when she started experiencing arthritis in both of her knees and one hip, resulting in her having to undergo three replacement surgeries. Despite this, she says her mobility continued to worsen to the point where there were times she "could not walk without considerable help."

"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," she said.

"It has taken me some time to understand the diagnosis, to adjust to it and to decide how much I wanted to say about it publicly," she continued. "Parkinson’s is different for everyone, and it can be unpredictable. Some days I’m so tired I can’t get the day moving at all. On others, it gives me a little more room to move, think, work and feel like myself."

Cancer treatment

Simon added that at the same time she was sorting through those emotions, she also underwent treatment for the cancer on her face. The two-time Grammy winner, whose last major public appearance was in 2019, said that while the cancer was removed, the surgery altered her appearance and made her "more self-conscious about being seen in public."

"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.’)," the singer wrote. "And this gave my inner critic quite a lot of new material."

She said "withdrawing from public view was the most palatable reaction," when considering the Parkinson’s disease diagnosis, the surgery and the "emotional effects of it all."

WATCH | Why Carly Simon sang about Nova Scotia in her hit song You're So Vain:There is no cure for Parkinson’s, a neurological disease that robs people of control over their movement and affects more than 120,000 people in Canada and 10 million people worldwide.

Simon says that while the loss of her movement and the anxiety and depression that comes with the diagnosis has been "one of the hardest things to explain," it has not "stopped [her] living" and that she has "not stopped working."

She said that "in the middle of all of this," she’s been recording a new album called Comes in Waves.

"That still feels mysterious to me," she said. "Music has always known when to arrive. It has rescued me more times than I can count."

While the singer doesn't consider "Parkinson’s a gift or a blessing," she is "learning to live with it."

"These days I move more slowly, I lean on others more than I once did, and I have learned to accept that every day will look a little different," she said. "But I am still very much here."

with files from The Associated Press