1983
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The Carpenters, officially known as Carpenters, [a] were an American vocal and instrumental duo consisting of siblings Karen (1950–1983) and Richard Carpenter (born 1946). They produced a distinctive soft musical style, combining Karen's contralto vocals with Richard's harmonizing, arranging, and composition skills.
- 1965–1983
- Downey, California, United States
Oct 1, 2023 · Enjoy the timeless love songs of The Carpenters with their greatest hits collection. Indulge in the best of The Carpenters' music and relive the oldies but g...
The Carpenters. With a trademark sound highlighted by brother Richard’s multi-layered production and sister Karen’s timeless voice, the Carpenters set a new standard for melodic pop and became the top selling American artists of the 1970s. With their 1970 chart breakthroughs of " (They Long To Be) Close to You" and "We've Only Just Begun ...
- Road Ode
- Another Song
- If I Had You
- Touch Me When We’Re Dancing
- It’S Going to Take Some Time
- Aurora/Eventide
- I Won’T Last A Day Without You
- All I Can Do
- There’S A Kind of Hush
- This Masquerade
The Carpenters’ greatest album remains the compilation Singles 1969-1973, on which the duo remixed, re-recorded and segued their hits into one glorious gush of sound, but 1972’s A Song for You runs it close, because the album tracks are as good as the singles, as on this gorgeous portrait of a tour-weary musician.
Plenty of early-70s albums ended with a free-form jam, but of all the exponents of said form, the Carpenters were the most improbable: Another Song unexpectedly and rather thrillingly unravels into psychedelic guitar and occasionally atonal electric piano improv, underpinned by frantic drums. They never recorded anything like it again.
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. 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 f...
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.
Co-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.
By 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. The fragile loveliness of Aurora and Eventide – two versions of the same song that bookended 1975’s Horizon – is a perfect case in point.
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.
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. Incredibly, it sounds remarkably like late-90s Stereolab.
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. 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.
The Carpenters were seldom mediocre: 1973’s Now and Then was either unspeakable (the gruesome children’s choir-assisted Sing; a cover of Hank Williams’ Jambalaya, a song about as appropriate for the Carpenters as the Dead Kennedys’ Holiday in Cambodia) or exquisite, as on this gorgeous, drowsy-but-dark version of Leon Russell’s song about a failing...
- 4 min
- Alexis Petridis
The discography of the American pop group the Carpenters consists of 14 studio albums, two Christmas albums, two live albums, 49 singles, and numerous compilation albums. The duo was made up of siblings Karen (lead vocals and drums) and Richard Carpenter (keyboards and vocals). The siblings started their musical career together in the latter ...
- 16
- 49
- 2
- 14
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**************************************** This is the official Carpenters music Channel on youtube ****************************************
Your absolute favorite. An awesome discovery. We’ve Only Just Begun. Yesterday Once More. Goodbye To Love. With a trademark sound highlighted by brother Richard’s multi-layered production and sister Karen’s timeless voice, the Carpenters set a new standard for melodic pop. The public caught on immediately, making the Carpenters the top ...
