![]() ![]() But sometimes they were so beguiling they were hard to resist: There’s a Kind of Hush has rounded edges, but it’s really charming. Karen protested the duo’s image “would be impossible for Mickey Mouse to maintain”: if they were seen as cutesy, it was down to their up-tempo songs, which seldom had the emotional heft of their ballads. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy 12. #THE LAST SONG RATING SERIES#Karen and Richard Carpenter in the TV series Make Your Own Kind of Music, 1971. Incredibly, it sounds remarkably like late-90s Stereolab. You can hear the Carpenters’ jazz roots on All I Can Do, a song unlike anything else they recorded: layers of Swingle Singers-ish harmonies and an electric piano solo over a 5/4 rhythm, powered by Karen’s hyperactive drumming. ![]() Paul Williams – later to write Evergreen, score Bugsy Malone and work on Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories – was the Carpenters’ great songwriting discovery, co-authoring a string of great songs for them after they covered his ad soundtrack We’ve Only Just Begun, the superb, bittersweet I Won’t Last A Day Without You among them. ![]() The fragile loveliness of Aurora and Eventide – two versions of the same song that bookended 1975’s Horizon – is a perfect case in point. Aurora/Eventide (1975)īy the mid-70s, the Carpenters’ albums had begun to sound formulaic and stuffed with filler, but they still occasionally pulled out something great in between the hits. Photograph: Koh Hasebe/Shinko Music/Getty Images 15. It’s Going to Take Some Time (1972)Ĭo-written by Carole King – at the time a noticeably hipper songwriter than the Carpenters usually worked with – It’s Going to Take Some Time offers the delightful, if seldom-heard sound of Karen picking herself up and dusting herself down after a failed romance, rather than describing its agonies in heartrending detail. Made in America (1981) was a cautious return after a hiatus provoked by Richard Carpenter’s drug addiction and the anorexia that would eventually kill his sister, but the single Touch Me When We’re Dancing was great, very gently beckoning a hint of disco into the Carpenter’s luxurious sound world. When its contents were unveiled on posthumous Carpenters’ albums, their decision appeared baffling, as evidenced by I Had You: her patent brand of melancholy given a smooth, shiny funk makeover. The day before she died, in February 1983, Karen Carpenter rang producer Phil Ramone to discuss “our fucking record” – the 1980 solo album her label refused to release. If I Had You (recorded 1980, released 1989) ![]()
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