Dad’s been bugging me for years to review this album, and now that we’re next-door neighbors, he has more frequent opportunities to get the earth to move under my feet.
“If your intention is to chronicle the history of popular music, there’s no way you can ignore Tapestry. It stayed on the charts longer than any other album except Dark Side of the Moon.”
“Uh, you do know that Dark Side of the Moon is my least-favorite Pink Floyd album, don’t you?”
“Yes, but at least you acknowledged it in a review that I violently disagreed with. I also know that you did Michael Jackson’s Thriller because it was one of the biggest-selling records ever.”
“You got me there.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“I can’t figure out why it was such a big hit.”
“Well, maybe you should approach it from that angle—try to figure out the why. You might learn something.”
“Okay, you win—but I want something in return.”
“No surprise there.”
“I want you to promise me that you’ll never bug me about the Traveling Wilburys again.”
“Deal.”
*****
A few weeks after that conversation, I spent a week in Eastern Europe on EU business and had the perfect opportunity to listen to Tapestry several times on the four-hour flight from Bucharest to Dublin. The first pass told me what I already knew: Carole King was an average singer and an average pianist who wrote catchy songs in classic Brill Building style. Before proceeding to the second go-round, I checked the Billboard Top 200 albums list for 1971. Tapestry came in second behind the soundtrack for Jesus Christ Superstar, but beneath Tapestry in the Top 10 were The Carpenters’ Close to You, Janis Joplin’s Pearl, The Partridge Family Album, James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James, and Cat Stevens’ Tea for the Tillerman. None of the great rock albums like Sticky Fingers, Aqualung and Every Picture Tells a Story made the top 20. “Hmm. Maybe after the crazy 60s, people wanted to mellow out a bit, and Carole rode the wave,” I thought. In the next round, I focused on the lyrics and noted two characteristics: most were written in the vernacular, reflecting everyday speech; and most expressed emotions about core life experiences—intimate relationships, friendship, and the yearning for home. After three more run-throughs, I arrived at a hypothesis.
Tapestry touched millions of people because Carole King was an average singer and average pianist who wrote and sang songs in a common language, expressing commonly-held feelings. She came across as “one of us,” authentic and empathetic. After the wild ride of the 60s, millions of people probably wanted to chill out and get back to the essential needs of love, friendship and home. I found confirmation of the latter part of my hypothesis on Songfacts:
Seth Swirsky, who was a staff songwriter for Chappell Music in the ’80s and ’90s before recording his own material as a solo artist, cites Tapestry as an album that record companies would shy away from today, as King would not be considered marketable. He told us, “She needed to get her own thing going. And it turned out to be an album that hit everybody, what they were thinking and feeling, right at that moment. America in the ’60s, everybody was moving away to San Francisco, and flowers in their hair, and it was tumultuous. But here it was, a tapestry of home again.”
If you’re looking for razzle-dazzle, Tapestry is not for you. Lou Adler deliberately kept the production to a minimum to ensure a warm, welcoming sound. Carole has an uninimidating, everywoman voice, and most Janes and Joes can sing along to her catchy melodies. Carole’s approach to piano features none of the histrionics of a Liberace (thank fuck), but she has an excellent feel for the piano’s percussive-rhythmic abilities and its rich chording possibilities. When you listen to Tapestry, the experience is closer to a friends-and-family sing-along than a formal recital. I can easily imagine that when people listened to Tapestry, it felt like a homecoming of sorts.
Though the largely male music critics during that period wrote rave reviews of Tapestry, the album had a greater impact on the women of the era. In the highly insightful article “Carole King – A Consequential Female Artist, But a Feminist?” on FemFolk, the author explains Carole’s impact and exposes the challenges female musicians faced in the early days of Second Wave Feminism, when women were still struggling to define their role in society:
Though her cultural impact is often underappreciated, Carole King has been an important contributor to the advancement of women in the music industry and a positive role model to the female audiences of her generation . . .
Overall, it appears that sexism has faded the memory of Carole King’s contribution to women in music. Again and again, King’s impact has not been recognized or remembered. For example, in the book Go, Girl, Go!: The Women’s Revolution in Music by James Dickerson, King’s name is mentioned only once. Dickerson writes, “Carly Simon and Carole King were the two most successful singer-songwriters of the decade, and of the two, it was Carly who was dazzling the world with her toothy smile and sexy album covers.” Curiously enough, the author continues to discuss Simon’s sex appeal for several pages, but never returns to speak of the other “most successful singer-songwriter of the decade.”
However, it is because King has not relied on sex appeal, and embraced her natural self, with her loose, naturally curly hair, loose, comfortable clothing and lack of makeup. King and her work have contributed a great deal to women in music and to her audience by finding huge success in embracing her natural self.
Tapestry (1971), recorded after King moved to LA, became one of the first albums that King lent her voice. The work met incredible success overall. It ranked number one in 1971 on the Billboard 200 and remained on the charts for four years. It was a great cultural accomplishment because Carole King was the first female artist to have achieved this much success. According to Carrie Havranek, author of Women Icons of Popular Music: Rebels, Rockers, and Renegades, the album “was a significant feminist achievement not necessarily for its content per se but because King wrote, sung, arranged, played, and controlled her own musical product.” King became the first woman in American popular music who could boast these credits (Havranek 234). Tapestry was the best-selling pop album ever recorded (though the record has since been broken) and remained the top-selling solo album by a female for over 25 years (Perone 6).
Additionally, Tapestry was culturally significant in that it established the singer/songwriter genre, that would be taken up by King’s (both male and female) contemporaries like James Taylor, Paul Simon (a childhood friend of King’s), Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon. The album allowed King to present herself as an independent artist who was in complete control of her work and did not need to conform to cultural standards. The fact that in doing this, King found great success only strengthened the message. “Much of what allowed King to create music that was solely her own was her imperfect voice, which was almost conversational and not stylized,” according to Havranek, “female singers did not usually gain attention by singing in such a normal, unsexualized way. King’s voice literally opened the door for other women to be themselves rather than conform to a specific type” (Havranek 243). In King’s 2012 memoir she admits that “I wasn’t in the same league vocally as Aretha Franklin, Joni Mitchell, or Barbara Streisand (whom I considered “real singers”), but I knew how to convey the mood and emotion of a song with an honest, straight-from-the-heart interpretation” (208).
The “why” I was missing was the cultural context—what it was like to be a woman in 1971 USA. Needing to reconnect with the pop culture in that particular year while dealing with a heavy work schedule, I went through the Nielsen ratings to find relevant TV shows that were on the air around the time Tapestry was released on February 10. Lucky for me, The Mary Tyler Moore Show had debuted the year before, and I own the full box set! I watched most of Season One, and now feel completely confident that I can view Tapestry through the lens of an unmarried, independent, professional woman of the 70s.
I’m gonna make it after all!
The essence of the female experience in that era can be described in one word: ambivalence. Both Mary Richards and the songs on Tapestry express the ambivalence that many 70s women experienced regarding their role in society, oscillating between the traditional role emphasized in their upbringing and the desire to explore career possibilities. Mary felt equal to her colleagues, but couldn’t imagine calling her boss anything but “Mr. Grant.” In a similar vein, Carole flips between asserting her needs and kowtowing to the master, expressing the feelings of many women dealing with similar internal conflicts.
*****
Carole King’s first album Writer was released in May 1970 and drew little attention. Retrospective reviews blame poor production, and while that might have had something to do with it, it wasn’t uncommon for maiden albums to flop in the USA in the early days of album dominance (unless your name was Jimi Hendrix). Maiden efforts by The Who, David Bowie, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd and Billy Joel all languished in the lower reaches of the Billboard charts. Though she had a solid reputation as a songwriter, Carole was virtually unknown outside of the music business—she was the name that followed “Gerry Goffin” in parentheses on 45 labels. Things began to open up a bit after the Beatles went their separate ways and music fans began searching for alternatives, thereby opening the doors for the newbies and the previously ignored to make their play.
Carole had several things going for her in her attempt at a breakthrough. Her songwriting prowess had yielded several classic hits, and by choosing to work with Lou Adler, she had a producer with a solid track record as a hitmaker (The Mamas & the Papas, Jan & Dean, Barry McGuire, Johnny Rivers, to name a few). She had her pick of the best session musicians in town and musical buddies like James Taylor and Joni Mitchell who were willing to lend a hand.
The little girl with perfect pitch who started piano lessons at the age of four and “wanted so much to master the popular songs pouring out of the radio,” and who jumped from kindergarten to second grade due to her “exceptional facility with words and numbers” was on her own now, a single parent with two children, after having ended the marriage with Goffin a few years before. It was time for Carole King to step out of the shadows and into the spotlight.
And all she had to do was be herself.
*****
All songs written by Carole King except where noted.
“I Feel the Earth Move”: Rule #1 in the unwritten book How to Make a Breakthrough Album is “you can’t hold nothin’ back.” In the parlance of the times, you gotta let it all hang out and have complete confidence in what you’re trying to accomplish. Of all the songs on Tapestry, “I Feel the Earth Move” conveys that confidence, in both the nature of the composition and its intense, metaphorical expression of a woman’s sexual needs. Songfacts dutifully noted that “the song has a risqué feel (at least by 1971 standards),” but missed the equally important aspect of sex expressed in the song: the emotional connection.
The composition is split between two distinct parts. The chorus is set to a truncated minor blues pattern in the key of C minor (Cm7/F). This is where Carole expresses sexual desire in the lyrics over a background featuring the innate sexiness of the blues:
I feel the Earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumblin’ down
I feel my heart start to tremblin’
Whenever you’re around
Those lines are much more expressive than “Hey, I’m getting horny” because they capture the overwhelming nature of the libido when confronted with a desirable stimulus.
The verse lines are set to the complementary major key (Eb major) with a strong melody and a marvelous, obviously-written-on-a-piano chord pattern of Ebmaj7-Eb6-Abmaj7-Fm7/Ab, closing with a transitional pattern of F/G, Cm7, F/C, Cm7, F/C. This is where Carole covers the emotional aspects of closeness, tenderness and unfettered desire:
Oh, oh, darling, when you’re near me
And you tenderly call my name
I know that my emotions
Are something I just got to have you tame
I just got to have you baby
I love that closing line for its unashamed assertiveness. You go, girl!
Placing “I Feel the Earth Move” in the pole position opening the album has to rank as the biggest no-brainer of all time. You can tell Carole is feeling it, and that’s exactly what she needed to do to excite listeners. She receives solid support from the band with Charles Larkey thumping that bass and “Kootch” Kortchmar throwing in some tasty licks. The call-and-response between Carole’s piano and Kortchmar’s guitar in the instrumental passage is as good as it gets.
p.s. Kudos to Diddy D for coming up with a thorough and accurate rendering of the chord patterns on Ultimate Guitar: one for guitarists (with a capo so you don’t have to mess with C minor key fingerings) and one for pianists. I also appreciate his public service announcement that should be a standard entry on all UG chord patterns: “IGNORE THE CHORD BOX DIAGRAMS that the website displays, they are generated automatically from a generic database and often don’t show the best options for a particular chord progression. Just use the voicings suggested in the text column numbers.”
“So Far Away”: Carole’s gift for composing music that reflects the lyrical mood is on full display with this achingly beautiful song about situational separation. Whether you’re away from your honey, your family, your best friend, or your miniature schnauzer, the feeling of separation can be disorienting and disquieting. The chords Carole came up with are indefinite chords that defy resolution: major ninths, major sevenths, sixths and minor sevenths. The uncertainty inherent in those chords strengthens the impact of the lyrical narrative that bemoans the circumstances that demand separation (often work-related) and the peripatetic itch that has affected many an American over the centuries:
So far away
Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore?
It would be so fine to see your face at my door
It doesn’t help to know you’re just time away
Long ago, I reached for you and there you stood
Holding you again could only do me good
How I wish I could, but you’re so far awayOne more song about movin’ along the highway
Can’t say much of anything that’s new
If I could only work this life out my way
I’d rather spend it bein’ close to you
The line “If I could only work this life out my way” has special meaning for me. I have a pretty good deal with the EU where I can work from home most of the time, but the second I find a meaningful job that doesn’t involve travel, I’m movin’ on. I’d rather spend my life being close to the people I love, which “could only do me good” from a mental health perspective. Surprisingly, sad songs often have more motivational power than deliberately motivational songs because they encourage you to reflect on what’s missing and do something about it.
“It’s Too Late” (Toni Stern-Carole King): On the flip side, sometimes relationships get to the point where it’s best to move on rather than continue for the sake of convenience, great sex or financial problems that limit your ability to find a decent place to live. The breakup depicted in Toni Stern’s lyrics is not a “Hit the Road, Jack” situation demanding immediate banishment but one that is tinged with regret that things simply weren’t working out. What’s important here from the perspective of a woman’s place in the world is that she’s the one who initiates the separation rather than the man, and instead of leaving without notice (which many women do if they’re concerned about a violent reaction), she sits him down for a face-to-face talk and shares her feelings openly and honestly.
Stayed in bed all mornin’ just to pass the time
There’s somethin’ wrong here, there can be no denyin’
One of us is changin’, or maybe we’ve just stopped tryin’ . . .There’ll be good times again for me and you
But we just can’t stay together, don’t you feel it, too?
Still I’m glad for what we had and how I once loved youBut it’s too late, baby, now it’s too late
Though we really did try to make it
Somethin’ inside has died
And I can’t hide and I just can’t fake it
Musically, the song has a certain resemblance to “So Far Away” in its heavy use of indefinite chords, but here they are employed to soften the blow of separation, consistent with the emotional intelligence on display in the lyrics. She has no desire to hurt or harm; it’s time for both partners to realize that the relationship has run its course.
Up to this point (and on most of the album), Carole has handled both lead and background vocals, and her appearance as a one-woman vocal group in this song is one of my favorites. The “no-no-no-no” in alternating stereo channels at the end of the first chorus feels like a “reminder to self” not to back down; her lush vocals on the second line of the following verse convey empathy; and her playful, melodic scat in the first instrumental passage is beautifully executed. Carole gave her backing band plenty of space to do their thing, and in addition to another Kootch gem of a guitar solo (he also handles the congas), Curtis Amy shines on soprano sax and Ralph Schuckett’s electric piano adds a nice contrast to Carole’s chording. “It’s Too Late” won the Grammy for Record of the Year, and given the excellence of the musicianship and the quality of the production, I fully endorse the Academy’s decision.
But I want to remind the Academy that they totally fucked up by choosing “Mrs. Robinson” over “Hey Jude.”
“Home Again”: This nice little piece repeats the theme of separation covered in “So Far Away,” and I’m not sure why they chose to put the two songs so close to one another. “Home Again” is performed well enough to avoid becoming a “skipper,” but it falls short of “So Far Away” in terms of impact.
“Beautiful”: In her memoir, Carole noted that this song came to her spontaneously after riding a New York subway and noticing that others seemed to reflect the way she felt. The lines “Mirrored in their faces I see frustration growing/And they don’t see it showing, why do I?” tell us that her subway companions viewed frustration as an unavoidable aspect of life. In response, she wrote “Beautiful” as an antidote for the workday blues that morphed into a song about the importance of positive self-esteem.
You’ve got to get up every morning with a smile in your face
And show the world all the love in your heart
The people gonna treat you better
You’re gonna find, yes you will
That you’re beautiful as you feel . . .I have often asked myself the reason for the sadness
In a world where tears are just a lullaby
If there’s any answer, maybe love can end the madness
Maybe not, oh, but we can only try
Naïve? It might feel that way when viewed through the lens of cynicism prominent in today’s world, but if you adopt cynicism as a response to cynicism, nothing will change and things are likely to get worse. If that argument doesn’t float your boat, get selfish and think of positivity as a way to strengthen your mental health. I think Carole’s message landed pretty well with listeners, much in the same way Stevie Wonder’s optimism lifted spirits during that dark decade.
“Way Over Yonder”: I appreciate the attempt at a secular spiritual and its message of hope, but the song feels too derivative to tickle my fancy. Oh, well.
“You’ve Got a Friend”: James Taylor played guitar on five tracks and backing vocals on one; I haven’t mentioned his contributions because they weren’t worth mentioning. After lending Carole his acoustic guitar talents on “You’ve Got a Friend,” he asked Carole if he could record the song, and his version became a runaway hit. As the songwriter, Carole won the Grammy for Song of the Year, even though the award was based on James Taylor’s version. What I really like about this story is that the pair became lifelong close friends, practicing what they preached.
I have a strong preference for Carole’s more emotive version that captures the utter loneliness of friendlessness and deep empathy in the opening lines, “When you’re down and troubled and you need some love and care.” Taylor’s rendering of those lines is emotionally flat, as is much of his performance. I also like Carole’s decision to introduce a small string section of violin, viola and string bass to enhance the emotive power in the lyrics. On my list of favorite friendship songs, Carole’s version of “You’ve Got a Friend” is tied with Bill Withers’ “Lean On Me” for the top spot.
As fate or luck would have it, the inspiration for the song came from . . . James Taylor. From Songfacts:
According to James Taylor, King was inspired by his song “Fire and Rain,” which contains the line, “I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend.” King told him about the connection decades later, when they were promoting their reunion gig Live at the Troubadour in 2007. “That came as a real revelation to me,” Taylor told Stereogum. “It sort of filled in a blank for me about what had really motivated her to write that tune. I’m really glad she told me, and I’m also glad she didn’t tell me at the time.”
“Where You Lead” (Stern-King): Oops! The original pre-Gillmore-Girls version features these stunningly disgusting lines:
I always wanted a real home with flowers on the windowsill
But if you wanna live in New York City, honey, you know I will (Yes I will, yes I will)
I never thought I could get satisfaction from just one man
But if anyone can keep me happy, you’re the one who canWhere you lead, I will follow
Anywhere that you tell me to
If you need, you need me to be with you
I will follow
Carole wised up later and pulled the song from her concert setlist. “King was uncomfortable singing about following a man around and nixed the song from her concert repertoire. ‘After I recorded it for the Tapestry album, we women decided that we didn’t actually need to follow our men anymore,’ she said in a 2004 interview. She explained that Gilmore Girls gave the song a new lease on life by changing the message to reflect a bond between a mother and daughter.” (ibid)
Given that she wrote the song in an era of role ambivalence, I accept Carole’s heartfelt apology.
“Will You Love Me Tomorrow” (Goffin-King): Despite the star-studded lineup with Taylor and Joni Mitchell covering background vocals, the performance doesn’t come close to matching the Shirelles’ version. The song was clearly written for a teenage audience grappling with the age-old teenage question, “Do I go all the way or not?” and all three vocalists were way past their teenage years. Not Carole’s best choice of material.
“Smackwater Jack” (Goffin-King): Oh, yuck! This song is completely out of place on an album largely focused on emotional honesty and a woman’s place in the world. I imagine it was selected to lighten the mood, but I don’t find a song about a mass murderer and his deadly shotgun particularly mood-lightening.
“Tapestry”: The title track is notable for providing the album with a title, but instead of creating a tapestry that reflects the album’s major themes, Carole drifts off into the world of King Arthur with an unintelligble journey through fantasy land where a man turns into a toad and a Dumbledore figure enters the scene to take her back to reality.
“(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” (Goffin-King-Wexler): Though Carole admitted she couldn’t compete with Aretha as a singer, she acquits herself pretty well with her “honest, straight-from-the-heart interpretation.” Similar to “Where You Lead,” the woman embraces the submissive role, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing if that role allows her to manifest her true self. The dumbest thing Hillary Clinton ever said was, “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was pursue my profession.” There is nothing wrong with a woman wanting to be a mother if that’s what makes her feel happy and fulfilled. Shit, if such women didn’t exist, we’d be extinct in no time! (Though it seems the men currently in power are determined to accelerate that process anyway).
*****
My take on Tapestry is “strong opening, weak close.” I can understand how the album became mega-popular due to the stronger songs and Carole King’s earnestness, but I wish she had taken more time to record the album (it was finished in three weeks) and replaced the songs that clearly did not fit with more thematically compatible numbers. Even with its misses, Tapestry represented a significant step in advancing opportunities for other female musicians and helped millions of women process their feelings of ambivalence in a male-dominated society. In that sense, it qualifies as one of the most influential albums of all time.
*****
Footnote: To help me preserve my mental health and live up to my responsibility to ensure my reviews are not contaminated by off-topic biases, I will be seriously reducing reviews of American music containing lyrics for the foreseeable future. All lyrical songs convey messages about a culture, and I find it far too stressful to deal with American lyrics that describe or reflect a culture that no longer exists. I will continue to review the instrumental works of American jazz musicians, but you will see more reviews from artists located elsewhere. At present, albums from Africa, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, England, France, Ireland, New Zealand and Scotland are on my possibles list, several of which came from reader suggestions. I’ll also be exploring more 21st Century music, while limiting 21st Century lyrical music from Trumpistan to a bare minimum. It’s bad enough that I have to deal with the impact of his sickening agenda in my human rights work, and I don’t want the ugly feelings I have regarding the USA to interfere with my writing.
As I have some cultural and historical research to complete before I explore the music of some of those countries, the next six reviews will go to the Brits and Canadians.