Listening to Carly Simon’s music has always felt a tad voyeuristic.It’s as if you’re eavesdropping on thoughts that are so personal you know you should stop, but the words are so compelling you can’t.

For more than four decades, Simon has woven spellbinding tales of romance, love and passion, whether it be reluctantly bowing to convention on her first top 10 hit, 1971’s “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be”; the jubilant, short-lived joy of 1974’s “Haven’t Got Time for the Pain”; or her signature song, the trenchantly observant “You’re So Vain.”

Simon, 63, grew up in a sophisticated New York environment, the daughter of Simon & Schuster founder Richard Simon. Surrounded by words and celebrated authors, it’s no surprise that lyrics come first for the Grammy-winning songwriter. “It’s very hard for me to write words after I’ve written the music,” she says.

Before she was 20, she’d landed on the pop charts as one-half of the Simon Sisters, a folk duo with older sister Lucy. In 1964 the pair reached No. 73 with “Winkin’, Blinkin’ and Nod,” based on the popular children’s poem. Despite an almost paralyzing stage fright, a solo career beckoned, and it has been one filled with moments of glory—10 Top 20 singles, winning a Grammy as 1971’s best new artist and the Oscar for best song in 1990 with Working Girl’s “Let the River Run,” and composing an opera in 1993. A high-profile marriage to James Taylor ended in 1983 but yielded two talented children, Sally and Ben, both of whom are musicians. Simon is also a breast-cancer survivor.

In late April, Simon released This Kind of Love, her first album of original new material in eight years. Influenced by her love of Brazilian music, the album is a shimmering, swaying tribute to the rhythms that first captivated her when she saw the 1959 Brazilian film Black Orpheus, which retold the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

This Kind of Love is her first album for Hear Music after a stint on Sony, where label bosses encouraged her to release cover albums, including her fourth CD of standards. “I was disheartened that the people at Sony didn’t want me to do my own music, because they thought nobody wanted to hear what someone my age is thinking,” Simon says. “Well, that’s sexism, ageism and brutism all in one, and that’s cruel.”

In Manhattan, as she rehearses for a spate of television appearances to promote the new project, Simon spoke candidly about her initial attempts at songwriting, relating to androgyny and channeling the ghost of Gershwin.

Is it true that a poor memory led to your first stabs at songwriting?
I had a very bad memory for the poems that I had to memorize in school, and so when I was taking Italian at Sarah Lawrence I discovered—and this is sort of how I realized I could write songs—if I made the poems into songs, I could remember the words. That’s how I got interested in chords and weird transpositions, and I became fascinated with the tones I could get and the changes I could make chordally.

Did you write them down or do this in your head?
In my head. I was sort of an unschooled musician, which I’m not proud of. I would much prefer, at this point, to have that skill under my belt and to play as well as most of my friends. As it is, I can write a tune in my head and figure out what the notes are so that, without hearing my voice sing it, I can write it out on paper. I can’t do it very well, and it takes me hours and hours, but I can do it all on the basis of intervals.

Early in your writing days, you sent songs to Cass Elliot, Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick. Did you want to be a songwriter instead of a performer?
Yes. Ever since high school, I was terribly nervous about singing or doing anything in front of people. I think it emanated from the fact that I had a stammer, so when I was asked to speak in class, it was a total embarrassment.

For more, get the latest Issue of Performing Songwriter, ISSUE No. 111