Carole King, "Tapestry"
CJ makes you so happy you could cry
“Life-changing!”
That was my 23-year-old daughter’s response when I asked her how the Taylor Swift concert was this past Saturday night. Samantha, like many young women her age, grew up on Swift’s music and made this concert a priority from the moment Tickmaster decided they were going to rat-fuck the whole process. After overcoming the evil overlords and actually scoring tickets, Samantha’s experience and sentiments echoed those of everyone lucky enough to attend.
Taylor Swift is a genius. A talented, media-savvy entrepreneur whose creative output is matched only by her marketing prowess. But she isn’t the first. She comes from a long line of women who believed in their music and themselves. Like the performers my Mom used to stand in line to see at cramped Cambridge coffeehouses–Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell. A girl, a powerful voice and a guitar.
Or, in the case of this week’s subject, a piano.
It would be wildly inaccurate to say that Carole King came out of nowhere in the 1970s. Especially since King (along with her then husband Gerry Goffin) spent the ‘60s writing hit songs for everyone from Aretha Franklin and Dusty Springfield to Little Eva and the Monkees. But it wasn’t until 1971 that she put her own singular voice behind the lyrics that seemed to flow from her in an endless stream. With her second studio album, Tapestry, King explored universal themes of love, loss, friendship and doubt in a way that resonated with millions of young women at the time and continues to do so even fifty years later. Which isn’t to say that men didn’t connect with the music. They did, including EONS’ resident metalhead, yours truly. But, you’d be hard-pressed to find a woman between the ages of 25 and 70 who doesn’t have Tapestry among her desert island discs.
It’s difficult to pick a favorite song on this album. It changes from one listening to the next. I love the sentiment behind “I Feel the Earth Move.” King doesn’t hear wedding bells or a heavenly choir. Her reaction is literally seismic. If someone makes the earth move for you, never let them go.
“So Far Away” reminds me of the years my wife and I spent in a long distance relationship that worked against all odds. (What can I say? She made the earth move. Still does.) “It’s Too Late” is one of the greatest breakup songs of all time. And “Beautiful” became the archetypal empowerment anthem long before that term had been defined.
“You’ve Got A Friend” and “Natural Woman” are so brilliant that they became showstoppers for other artists–James Taylor and the aforementioned Queen of Soul, respectively.
I do seem to find myself coming back to “Where You Lead”. Although King is singing to a lover, the song’s place in pop culture as the theme to the ultimate mother-daughter relationship show, Gilmore Girls, has transformed it into a metaphor for unconditional loyalty. Samantha and her mother used the show and the song to cement their own unbreakable bond during a particularly difficult time. So this one is forever in my heart.
In parts or as a whole, Tapestry is life-changing indeed.
Mitch’s Response:
The kindest lie people tell when you lose someone close is that things will get better. Time will pass and you’ll learn how to live with the loss, but it never gets better. The pain changes you. It becomes a part of you. It never gets better.
When I first fell in love with Tapestry as a teenager I marveled at the raw and naked intensity of the themes that ran through this album. A vulnerable young woman seeking connection, both excited and scared by the idea of loving someone, fearing loss, and being honest and open with the world, with just a piano and her voice for support.
Years later, in another life, I had a mother-in-law who was a very sweet woman who loved me and I loved her. We used to drive to work together and listen to Tapestry. Years after that, not long before my own mother died, the whole family made a trip to Broadway to eat some deli and see a show to celebrate her birthday. It was a perfect day, perhaps the last good one before everything changed. We saw Carole King’s Beautiful. And it was.
As a kid I loved Tapestry because the music - and the vocals - are just so special, with incredible songs like “So Far Away”, “It’s Too Late”, “Way Over Yonder”, and “Will You Still Love Me” (my all-time favorite), and I truly marveled at Carole's emotional honesty and intensity.
But as an adult I feel this album in a way that my younger self just couldn’t comprehend. It’s a more painful listen, but more profound as well, making me think about love lost and found, lives and homes long gone, and my two, sweet beautiful mothers.
Pitch Successful (pantheon-level album)
Ken’s Response:
As the old Hollywood cliché goes, let’s cut to the chase! I love this album, always have, always will. It’s in my top 5 of all time and there was a year or two in the mid-’90s when I proudly proclaimed Tapestry as my favorite album.
Carole King had already charted several hits, or should I say other people charted on songs written by King, long before Tapestry was recorded. She had to be convinced by good friend and fellow Brill Building alum, James Taylor, to put her own voice and piano behind her words and music. The result is astonishingly profound, vulnerable, and wildly entertaining.
I am moved every time I hear “Home Again” and King’s slower, more heartfelt version of “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” a song virtually synonymous with The Shirelles.
Think about it for a second, there are three tracks on the album that other people made famous. In addition to The Shirelles, people know “You’ve Got a Friend” because of James Taylor, and of course, the Queen herself, Ms. Aretha Franklin crushed “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.” But they’re all King’s work, and for my money, her versions on Tapestry are all equal or better than the covers that became hits.
If I must pick on one thing, it’s that my favorite song “Where You Lead” was a relatively unknown song, but it was mine! I went to it all the time; it was my secret swimming hole or fishing spot. But in Autumn of 2000, a little show on the WB network called Gilmore Girls started using it as its theme song, and the song went mainstream. For me, it was like building an elevator to the top of Mt. Everest to admire the view. You no longer needed to delve into the deep tracks (or as our own WZLX used to call them, the lost 45s), you just needed to have a TV and a short attention span.
Thank you, CJ, for this pick. I’m thrilled that we get to share this album with everyone. And folks, take that elevator right to Track 8, and enjoy “The Theme From Gilmore Girls” as much as I have.
Pitch Successful (CJ’s got a friend)
CJ’s pitch was never in doubt, and Carole King’s Tapestry has been proudly hung at the Newbury St. Collection. What’s your take on Carole King and her masterpiece Tapestry? Which top 20 album from 1971 would you have pitched? Please let us know in the comments section.
Please join us as next week as the EONS time machine eases the seat back and jumps to 1984 with Ken’s pitch for Van Halen’s 1984.
Tapestry was already in my early LP collection and now holds an even more special place tied to a (likely embellished) fond memory of my departed dad from my pre-teenage days. My parents could take or leave music in general, but an 8 track of Tapestry was on loop in a borrowed car the only night I ever saw my dad drunk, so much so (a) my mom drove and (b) she pulled over to the side of the road so he could puke. He cranked Smackwater Jack at a volume I later played Boston’s Long Time in my own first car, driving home from fraternity rush parties. RIP dad.
i never would have guessed you three hard ass punks are such sentimentalists. this album does absolutely nothing for me, but i admire (i think?) your willingness to depart from the comfort of your musical "lanes" to embrace your sappy sides.