United Kingdom, July 27 -- Carly Simon has Parkinson's disease.

The 83-year-old singer has explained she stepped out of the spotlight in recent years because of her condition - a degenerative brain disease that can impact on movement - and also due to feeling self-conscious after having skin cancer removed from her face, though she insisted that doesn't mean she has "stopped living".

She said in a lengthy statement: "So many people have written to me, kindly wondering about my relative silence, asking how I am and what I have been doing. The truth is, I've been learning how to live with Parkinson's disease.

"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....