Carly Simon appears to take aim at her ex-husband James Taylor with a five-word bombshell: “Maybe I never loved you.”
The Grammy-winning singer seems to turn the wreckage of their decade-long marriage into a song on her new album, “Comes in Waves.”
“Maybe I never loved you / But anyway, I thought I did,” Simon sings on the album’s second track. “I married you, we had a kid / That counts for something.”
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She immediately undercuts her own certainty, wondering whether she did love her former husband — and whether he ever truly loved her.
“Maybe I never loved you / Yes, and maybe I did,” she sings. “And maybe you never loved me / Although God knows, you said you did.”
Taylor is never identified by name.
Simon was married to the “Fire and Rain” singer from 1972 to 1983. Their relationship was rocky and remained in the public eye for decades.
“You came for me those times I hid / I’m so glad you did that,” she sings. “And maybe it’s wrong to wonder how everything kind became forbidden.”
The song eventually concludes with what sounds like a final attempt at closure.
“And maybe it’s best to bury whatever it was we had our fill of,” she sings. “Maybe I never loved you / Maybe I always will.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to both Simon and Taylor for comment.
In a 2015 interview with People, Simon said she and Taylor had not spoken in more than a decade.
“I still want to heal him, I still want to make him all right,” she said. “And I love him so much.”
Simon said Taylor’s treatment of her had been deeply painful, but writing her memoir helped her understand something about herself and about unrequited love.
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“My incredible loyalty to him, in spite of the fact that he has treated me without any regard, has been so painful to me for so long,” she told the outlet. “But, through the course of writing the book, I really started to understand that I could love and not be loved. And that was the big realization for me, that it doesn’t have to be a two-way street.”
The deeply personal album arrives as Simon has also been navigating significant health challenges away from the spotlight.
The “You’re So Vain” singer has Parkinson’s disease and recently had surgery for basal cell carcinoma, a form of skin cancer.
Simon explained to People why she had largely stayed out of the public eye.
“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,” the 83-year-old told the outlet in a statement published July 27.
“Parkinson’s is different for everyone, and it can be unpredictable,” she continued. “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.”
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Her comments offer a rare glimpse into what the legendary singer has been experiencing privately while continuing to create music.
Her latest project, “Comes in Waves,” marks the end of an 18-year hiatus from releasing original music — and she’s looking squarely at the past while confronting the realities of the present.
Simon and Taylor were one of music’s ultimate power couples of the 1970s.
Their romance moved fast. Simon said she went to Taylor’s dressing room at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1971 after seeing him perform.
“I have a wonderful history with Carnegie Hall,” she said previously in a Harper’s Bazaar interview. “I met James there that same year when I went to his dressing room to say hello, and he invited himself to my home for a late-night lunch that expanded into a life together.”
By the following year, they were married.
Their wedding took place on Nov. 3, 1972, in a small ceremony at Simon’s New York home.
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But the marriage didn’t last.
The couple separated in 1981, and their divorce was finalized in 1983. They share two children, Sally Taylor and Ben Taylor.
Behind the scenes, their marriage was unraveling as Taylor struggled with drug addiction. Both Simon and Taylor have acknowledged infidelity during their marriage.
Simon later described their relationship in her 2015 memoir, “Boys in the Trees,” as “far from the idyllic one that the general public reads about.”
She had an even harsher description of their relationship.
“Our love became bipolar, switching from love to hate, lust to loathing, and back again, sometimes within a day,” Simon wrote.
Taylor has also acknowledged how deeply his addiction damaged his relationships.
“You could fall in love, but if one of the people is addicted, it’s not going to work,” he told Parade. “The whole person is simply not available.”
