[ad_1]
All these decades later it’s easy to take Tapestry for granted. Like the other 1971 staples, Led Zeppelin IV to Joni Mitchell’s Blue, Carole King’s second solo album – released 50 years ago today, and recently named the 25th best album of all time by Rolling stone – always seemed to be there. After its release, it was the number one album in the country for an amazing 15 consecutive weeks, a feat that seems unimaginable now. (Adele’s 21 surpassed it, at 24 weeks, but that is the recent exception.) And future generations may find out from the remake – with revised and less submissive lyrics – of “Where You Lead” made for The Gilmore Girls.
But the sales numbers, ubiquity, and the Grammy Awards (Tapestry won album of the year and also won three other awards, including song and record of the year) were never the sum of what Tapestry accomplished. In his dozen songs, there were a number of stories that gave him a rare resonance and reach in pop albums of the time, and some of those stories might apply now as well.
Like everyone who’s seen the Broadway show Handsome know, King had a whole different life before Tapestry: living on the East Coast, married (to fellow songwriter Gerry Goffin) and having children while writing and recording demos as part of the Brill Building Song Factory. After breaking up with Goffin and moving to California in 1968, King moved on to a new phase and a new style of music – more Laurel Canyon and less Times Square. Tapestry told this story, slyly, through his remake of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” (a Goffin-King hit for the Shirelles in 1960), which provided a link to King’s past; the quiet, clean arrangement hinted at a more grown-up, less Top 40 sound.
Tapestry also happened just in time for the burgeoning women’s rights movement. Later that year, Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” would become the first major and clear feminist pop anthem, and 1971 also saw the arrival of not only Blue but the eponymous debut of Carly Simon. Tapestry communicated this cultural shift starting with the cover image of King, in a gray sweater, curled up by the window of his home in Los Angeles. She was alone but looked confident, at ease, at ease with herself. The ugly hairstyles and dresses seen in photos of her from the ’60s were now relics from the past and from another life.
This newfound confidence and strength were reflected on the record. For the first time, King wrote the bulk of the lyrics herself. The opening song, “I Feel the Earth Move,” happily expressed that feeling of being swept away by a new love, but King’s piano and the back-and-forth solos between her and guitarist Danny Kortchmar, communicated. strength and command. (King always knew exactly how she wanted her records to sound and always took charge of her sessions, even though Tapestry was officially produced by Lou Adler.) Likewise, the narrator of “It’s Too Late” is almost a question of fact when considering the end of a relationship; she seems rational, not clueless. For the 50th anniversary, an outtake album, “Out in the Cold,” was resurrected after first appearing as a bonus track on a 1999 CD reissue. A Confessional of Being Unfaithful to a Lover and ‘paying the price, he feels rational and adult (if not totally autonomous).
With his cameos from Mitchell and James Taylor (a couple at the time), Tapestry It also fits perfectly into the genre of singer-songwriters that was beginning to take over pop. On her “You’ve Got a Friend,” which Taylor also covered the same year, and the plaintive “Home Again,” King showed that she can be as contemplative and introspective as her new peers. Her version of “(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman” – a song she had co-wrote with Goffin a few years earlier – was also stripped-down and unadorned, especially after Aretha Franklin took over the song. (King was carving out ghostly remakes, even of his own work, long before the indie crowd started to grasp the idea.)
Yet, as much as we associate the album with King’s famous friends and the balladeer-diarist style of the day, Tapestry was above all a glorious pop record. King may have moved and left her New York studio behind, but she took with her a sense of hooks and craftsmanship that helped the album transcend the common vocal and guitar arrangements at the time. “Beautiful” had a show rebound, the great outlaw tale “Smackwater Jack” was on the R&B gallop, and “Where You Lead” (one of many songs with lyrics by collaborator Toni Stern) has mentioned the effervescent bop of Brill Bâtiment. Singer-songwriters who tried to sound “funky” might sound out of the woods, but King never did.
The greatest story told in Tapestry, the one who can still talk to people, is a personal reinvention. The days of songwriters for hire were dying, being replaced by bands and singers who increasingly wrote their own music and directly expressed their own feelings. King had just turned 29 when Tapestry came out, but the album announced that she had found herself, in the old parlance, as middle age began to loom in the distance. Is this a story that could resonate so much now in the days of Covid, as people re-evaluate their lives and careers and make the changes they always wanted to make? Time will tell, but if they make these decisions, Tapestry will be there, waiting for them.
[ad_2]
Source link