[1] Their debut album, Meet the Simon Sisters, featured the song "Winkin', Blinkin' and Nod", based on the poem by Eugene Field and put to music by Lucy.

The album earned Simon two Grammy nominations, went Platinum, and spawned three more Top 10 Adult Contemporary hit singles: "Give Me All Night", "The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of", and "All I Want Is You".

"[39] She has also spoken about growing up with dyslexia as well as her belief that the condition has positively influenced her songwriting, saying that her hit song "Anticipation" "came down from the universe into my head and then out my mouth, so it bypassed the mind.

The album produced a minor hit for the duo with the single "Winkin', Blinkin' and Nod",[9] a children's poem by Eugene Field that Lucy had put to music.

Writing for Rolling Stone, Stephen Davis gave a glowing review of the album, calling the title track "a spirited examination of the tensions involved in a burgeoning romantic situation in which nobody has any idea of what's going on or what's going to happen."

He also singled out "Our First Day Together" as "a quiet song, lovely and quite enigmatic, with a trace of the minor chord influence of Joni Mitchell," as well as "I've Got To Have You", which he described as "an absolute clincher.

[62] She hinted that it could be a composite of several people, with most press speculation considering Mick Jagger, who sings backup vocals on the recording,[63] and Warren Beatty.

The album was also well received critically; Jon Landau, writing in Rolling Stone, stated "Hotcakes is playful-sounding with some serious overtones — a balance that best suits [Simon] for the time being."

He also singled out the tracks "Think I'm Gonna Have a Baby", "Forever My Love", and "Haven't Got Time for the Pain" as "substantial songs and performances, superior to almost everything else she has so far recorded.

A major success, it went Gold within three weeks of release, and eventually became Simon's all-time best-selling disc, reaching Triple-Platinum status in the United States by the mid-1990s.

[10] Cash Box said that it has "an urban rock feeling, with ominous guitar chording and touches of syndrums," saying that "Simon's vocals are...sharp and bold" but "less restrained than usual.

"[95] AllMusic reviewer William Ruhlmann retrospectively called the track "the album's highlight" and declared it "Simon's best-written pop/rock song since 'You're So Vain' and a Top Ten hit to boot.

[100] Simon's 10th release, 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".

[108][109] Rolling Stone stated "Simon has returned to the sort of beautiful, folk-based singing and songwriting that originally made the world fall in love with her."

[115] One of the album's tracks, "The Wives Are in Connecticut", caught the attention of Nora Ephron and Mike Nichols, who asked Simon to score their upcoming film Heartburn.

[142] By this point, Sinatra's health was too poor for him to record, so the feat was accomplished by producers lifting an isolated prerecorded vocal track from an earlier performance and laying a new background – and Simon – behind it.

[148] In 1994, she covered the song "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" for Ken Burns' film Baseball,[149] as well as a recording of "I've Got a Crush on You" for Larry Adler's tribute album The Glory of Gershwin.

[162] That same year, Simon and her sister Lucy sang on the track "The Great Mandala (The Wheel of Life)" from Peter, Paul and Mary's album LifeLines.

[163] In November 1995, the American press reported an incident between Simon and the Pretenders' vocalist Chrissie Hynde at a Joni Mitchell concert at New York's Fez Club.

John Travolta duets with Simon on the track "Two Sleepy People", and Martin Scorsese penned the liner notes featured in the album's booklet.

"[175] The opening track, "Our Affair", was remixed by Richard Perry and featured on the soundtrack album of the 2000 film Bounce, starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Affleck.

The album also features vocal collaborations with her children; Ben and Sally, who perform a trio with Simon on the track "You Can Close Your Eyes", which author Sheila Weller described in her 2008 book Girls Like Us as "slow, spectral" and "achingly beautiful.

Simon's lawsuit stated that Starbucks publicly announced it was backing out of participation in Hear Music just days before the album came out—a decision that she claimed doomed the record before it was even released.

On November 26, 2009, Simon appeared on the Care Bears float of the 83rd Annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, where she performed an acoustic version of her hit "Let the River Run".

[202] On March 2, 2010, BBC Radio 2 broadcast An Evening With Carly Simon, where she performed live for the first time in the UK with her son Ben Taylor to a small audience of approximately 100 people.

Sara Bareilles, who inducted Simon, read a note from her stating: "I am humbled, shocked, proud, over-achieved, under-qualified and singularly grateful to everyone without whom I really couldn't be here."

[234] It was announced on July 12, 2023, that the compilation album These Are the Good Old Days: The Carly Simon and Jac Holzman Story would be released on CD and Vinyl on September 15, 2023.

[254] In May 2010, Simon revealed she had been one of the several celebrities who fell victim to financial advisor Kenneth I. Starr, whose Ponzi scheme lured her into "investing" millions of dollars with him, which she lost.

As a reason for changing that, Simon cited the recently released Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump can be heard bragging on a hot mic about his behavior towards married women that commentators and lawyers have described as sexual assault.

[294] The fifth-season premiere episode of Bob's Burgers, "Work Hard or Die Trying, Girl", involves Gene Belcher and his sometime friend Courtney Wheeler staging separate, and then ultimately unified, stage reenactments of the movies Die Hard and Working Girl, with Courtney's father Doug promising to enlist Carly Simon to appear at his daughter's performance.