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Every sha-la-la-la, every whoa-whoa, still shines... |
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Carpenters (absolutely not "The Carpenters") was a brother-and-sister pop duo, Karen and Richard Carpenter. Karen started out as the drummer but was gradually phased off the instrument once it became clear she had a superlative singing voice; Richard wrote the material, played piano and provided backing vocals.
They were active from 1969 to 1982 (with additional recordings released after Karen's untimely death in 1983, including a solo album Karen had recorded in 1979-80 which was finally released in 1996). They were prolific. They had numerous hits, only a few of which are commonly known to people who weren't there in The Seventies. Hits include "Close to You," "Sing," "Yesterday Once More," "We've Only Just Begun," and "Superstar." However, the majority of their radio airplay today is for their Christmas Songs.
Carpenters provides examples of the following tropes:
- Author Existence Failure: Karen's well-publicized death from anorexia nervosa (and possibly also bulimia) at the age of 32 is one of the band's main fame points today.
- Christmas Songs: "Merry Christmas, Darling" (first recorded in 1970), and the entirety of their 1978 LP Christmas Portrait. They rotate frequently on radio during the holiday season.
- Covered Up: A number of the duo's hits had previously been recorded by others, but became (at least in North America) primarily associated with Carpenters when their version became the hit. Examples include "Close to You," "Superstar," "Hurting Each Other," "I Won't Last a Day Without You," "Solitaire," and "Touch Me When We're Dancing." They also covered previous legitimate hit songs, including "Please Mr. Postman" (The Marvelettes) and "There's a Kind of Hush" (Herman's Hermits), as well as songs well-known from other sources, such as "Sing" (from Sesame Street).
- Hating on Monday: "Rainy Days and Mondays."
- Hidden Depths: Karen and Richard were not truly as conservative and as "goody-four-shoes" as was their public image. In early interviews, they showed themselves to in fact be quite liberal - both had had premarital sex, scorned organized religion, favored the legalization of marijuana (Karen didn't smoke, but only because she didn't like it), and opposed the Vietnam War. Thereafter their handlers clamped down on this aspect of their personalities so as to eliminate any suggestion of controversy.
- Incest Subtext: Karen and Richard disliked many of their LP covers because they felt the way they were posed suggested a romantic relationship between the two. A disc jockey in Toronto, during a radio interview with Richard, also angered him by suggesting that this was why he wrote so many love songs for her to sing (never mind that most of the duo's hits came from outside sources and were not written by Richard).
- Invincible Hero: Billboard chart watchers in the 1970s noted that every A-side single Carpenters released between "Close to You" in 1970 and "I Need to Be in Love" in 1976 reached either #1 or #2 on the magazine's Adult Contemporary (then known as Easy Listening) chart. And of those, all but three made #1. Billboard statisticians rank Carpenters as the #1 Adult Contemporary act of the 1970s and Karen as the #1 female AC vocalist of the decade (though the #1 female solo act is Olivia Newton-John, who was a close friend of Karen's). They also enjoyed a run of six consecutive Top 5 singles on the Hot 100 chart between 1970 and 1972.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: Averted. It was long believed that songwriter Tom Bahler wrote "She's Out of My Life," later a hit for Michael Jackson, after his relationship with Karen ended. Bahler claims this was not the case and that he wrote the song before he even met Karen.
- Self-Backing Vocalist: Another major component of their fame. Most of their singles involve Richard and Karen overdubbed numerous times on backing vocals, often using chords most rock bands have never even heard of.
- Silly Love Songs: The final selling point.
- Spell My Name with a "The": A notable aversion.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Karen Carpenter is often portrayed this way.
| Grammy Award for Best New Artist | |
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| 1960-1980 |
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| 1981-2000 |
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| 2001-2020 |
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