No list of the greatest songwriters of all-time is complete (or even worth reading) without a mention of Carole King. She is one of the most successful female songwriters in history, writing 118 hits that cracked the Billboard Hot 100 over her sixty-year career, earning her two separate inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (both as a performer and a songwriter). She started her career working in the early 1960’s with her then-husband Gerry Goffin, writing over two dozen songs that would eventually become classified as “standards” which basically describes songs with established popularity and considered part of the “standard repertoire” of a genre– these songs have typically been recorded by a variety of musicians over time.
In other words, she’s a songwriting legend.
Tapestry is King’s second studio album, and remains her most successful commercial output. The numbers are simply staggering– 30 million copies sold worldwide, Album of the Year, Song of The Year (“You’ve Got a Friend”), and stayed on the Billboard charts for an astounding 313 weeks total (15 at Number #1), which to this day is a record for a female solo artist. It is one of the best-selling albums of all-time and its critical acclaim put in the Top 25 of most “Best Album of All-Time” lists consistently. As Robert Christgau of Newsday said at the time, “Such statistics are so overwhelming that they seem to transform a mere record into some sort of ineluctable cultural presence. And in a sense, they do.”
The songwriting and musical composition on Tapestry are, in a word, absolutely lovely. King’s expansive vocal range and tidy vignettes of love and loss have an indelible way of connecting with the listener on a 1:1 level– there are so many moments during Tapestry where it’s easy to mistake this intimacy for physical proximity. There’s something special about early 70’s recordings (and King’s work in general) that make you feel that she’s behind her piano right beside you, telling the story of her life.
Standout Songs: “It’s Too Late”, “Way Over Yonder”, “I Feel The Earth Move”, “So Far Away”
