Table of Contents:
Carpenters (sheet music in the #smlpdf)
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Carpenters Anthology, including the songs:
All You Get From Love Is A Love Song
(Want You) Back In My Life Again
Because We Are In Love (The Wedding Song)
Beechwood 4-5789
Bless The Beasts And Children
Calling Occupants (Of Interplanetary Craft)
(They Long To Be) Close To You
Druscilla Penny
The End Of The World
For All We Know
Goodbye To Love
Goofus
Hurting Each Other
I Just Fall In Love Again
I Kept Loving You
I Need To Be In Love
I Won’t Last A Day Without You
It’s Going To Take Some Time
Let Me Be The One
Make Believe It’s Your First Time
Merry Christmas, Darling
One Love
Only Yesterday
Please Mr. Postman
Rainy Days And Mondays
Saturday
Sing
Solitaire
Sometimes
Carpenters – (They Long To Be) Close To You
Carpenters – For All We Know
Carpenters – Hurting Each Other
Carpenters – I Won’t Last a Day Without You
Carpenters – Love Songs, including the songs:
- A Song for You
- All You Get from Love Is a Love Song
- Close to You (They Long to Be)
- For All We Know
- Goodbye to Love
- Hurting Each Other
- I Just Fall in Love Again
- I Need to Be in Love
- I Won’t Last a Day Without You
- Karen’s Theme
- Make Believe It’s Your First Time
- Only Yesterday
- Rainy Days and Mondays
- Solitaire
- Superstar
- This Masquerade
- Top of the World
- We’ve Only Just Begun
- When I Fall in Love
- Where Do I Go from Here
- Yesterday Once More
- You’re the One
Carpenters – Rainy Days & Mondays
Carpenters – Sing (from Sesame Street)
Carpenters – Superstar
Carpenters – There’s Kind of a Hush
Carpenters – Top of the World
Carpenters – We’ve Only Just Begun
Carpenters – Yesterday Once More
Carpenters Close To You (They Long to Be)
Carpenters The Musical Legacy (Book) by Mike Cidoni Lennox & Chris May
Carpenters, The – (They Long to Be) Close To You
The Carpenters – It’s Easy To Play Carpenters, including the songs:
(They Long To Be) Close To You, 35
For All We Know, 42
Goodbye To Love, 45
Hurting Each Other, 17
I Won’t Last A Day Without You, 38
Let Me Be The One, 8
Only Yesterday, 26
Please Mr. Postman, 11
Rainy Days And Mondays, 14
Sing, 20
Solitaire, 5
TopOfTheWorld, 32
We’ve Only Just Begun, 30
Yesterday Once More, 23
The Carpenters Greatest Hits Ever – The Very Best Of Carpenters Songs Playlist
Carpenters: The wonderful, tragic and brief life of Karen Carpenter, 35 years after her death
She was one of the most emblematic voices of the 70s. But she had a life marked by heartbreak and tragedy. She died very young, at 32 years old.
Everything in Karen Carpenter was extreme and double. Her name – the name of her band, The Carpenters – instantly triggers a sweet memory: “Why do birds, suddenly appear…”. Her voice is remembered between serious and sweet, unique for many, angelic. However, her time in this world lasted only 32 years and was rather sharp and sad. Her mother found her lying on the floor of the room, already too skinny . She was taken to the hospital, but it was useless. She died of cardiac arrest on February 4, 1983. Although her real nightmare was how she came to that arrest.
New Haven – in the State of Connecticut, United States – could be translated as “new refuge.” Karen Anne Carpenter was born there on March 2, 1950, and Four years earlier did it, Richard Carpenter , her older brother. They were the only two children of Agnes Tatum and Harold Bertram Carpenter , a middle-class couple from the northeastern United States.
Together, Karen and Richard formed one of the most famous bands of the ’70s . Known as The Carpenters (the band’s real name was without the “The”), they sold nearly 100 million records and performed some of the most memorable romantic hits: They Long to Be Close To You (the verses “Why do birds , suddenly appear” are the first line of the song), Top Of The World , We’ve Only Just Begun or Rainy Days and Mondays , among others. They released 10 studio albums plus compilations, plus posthumous albums. They have their star on the Walk of Fame.
Furthermore, they were even invited by President Nixon to the White House, in August 1972, in perfect synchronization with the Watergate scandal (a month and a half before, the first five people in a case were arrested that ended, in 1974, with the resignation of Nixon himself). Nothing was a coincidence: that visit at some point represented the spirit of the Carpenters . While the 60s had been marked by musicians like Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix (both died in 1970 at the age of 27, due to excesses), Karen and Richard opted for a naive and loving language, devoid of the complexities of the world of which they themselves were not strangers (in fact, themselves least of all).
They sold and sold. Richard was the band’s musical leader; Agnes, his mother, his moral guardian. Many times, already being a millionaire, Karen wanted to move alone and they wouldn’t let her. It was a family that held conservative values . That kept them on the sidelines of the rock star life, but not the excesses. Richard, for example, spent his time taking Quaalude (methaqualone), a sedative with a hypnotic effect that helped him combat insomnia. Karen’s story was more complex .
Since she was a girl, she dreamed of being a popular artist. She achieved it soon. In 1966, they won The Battle of the Bands as an instrumental trio (Karen as drummer, her brother on piano) playing Garota de Ipanema . In 1969, they recorded her first album, already with her on her voice. In 1970, they had their first hit, precisely They Long to Be (Close To You) , which was number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 ranking, and they reached the Grammys. The duo’s success was immediate, and with that, their entry into the music industry. And with that, the criticism of her: some media outlets treated her as “chubby” or “chubby . “
Karen began to worry excessively about her appearance. She wanted to be what she considered a woman to match her success. She began taking laxatives and diet pills (reportedly up to 90 a day), and she abused syrup of ipecac to cause vomiting. She exercised compulsively. She saw herself as fat when everyone else, including the public, saw her as skeletal.
In 1981, she fell in love and married Tom Burris . The marriage lasted barely a year. He confessed to her a week before her wedding that she had had a vasectomy, which meant she was not going to have children. She wanted to cancel the wedding, but her mother convinced her not to. They married. It turned out that he was covered in debt and hoped to save himself thanks to Karen’s fortune. In 1982, they separated. She continued to lose weight. She weighed 41 kilos and was admitted to a clinic in New York. Not only that, but she never recovered; or rather, she was never just okay.
Two films tell his story. Curiously, there seem to be two different lives in each film. From a cinematographic point of view, the most interesting is that of Todd Haynes (the director of I’m not there , the biopic about Bob Dylan ). This is Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story . “Acted” by dolls ( Karen is a Barbie ), the medium-length film tells a critical story of the duo and their family. According to him, her brother was an egomaniac who exploited Karen’s talent in a callous and crude manner. Her mother in turn had a clear preference for Richard and only put pressure on Karen. Thus, she fell helplessly into anorexia nervosa. Immersed in a superfluous and cruel music industry, and in an unfavorable family context, she began to worry too much about her figure.
Successful or not, the film could not be seen much anyway: Richard Carpenter initiated a lawsuit against Haynes, who did not have the rights to the songs that set the story to music, for which Justice ordered the tapes destroyed. Only (“only”) pirated copies remain on the Internet.
The other film about the singer’s life is The Karen Carpenter Story , directed by Joseph Sargent and Richard Carpenter himself. Very much in tune with the band’s aesthetic, the film is a sad story poorly told . The parents are just parents trying, Richard is just a musician trying to grow in the industry with some vanity, and Karen is a good girl who wanted to be skinnier. The final scene shows her happily going to sleep in her room at her parents’ house. The last thing Agnes says is “I love you”; She smiles and goes to sleep.
In some ways, it is similar to the true story: on the last night of her life, Karen chose to sleep at her parents’ house . The next day she was supposed to sign her divorce papers and she was distraught. We don’t know if her mother told her she loved her and she smiled. We do know that she locked herself in her room and in the early morning of February 4, Agnes found her almost dead. She was exactly 35 years ago.
Like the Love Story soundtrack, which played while Ali MacGraw died and Ryan O’Neal was left alone, and yet is the stereotypical representation of love, the memory of Karen’s voice has nothing to do with her life. “Why do birds, suddenly appear…”, she continues to sound like a happy thing to us. It’s part of what she could: leave the world something different from what she saw in herself.
