A confluence of events merge on Carole King's blockbuster Tapestry.  Many of this album's millions of listeners are, unfortunately, unaware of her track-record as a pop songwriter.  Her collaboration with ex-husband Gerry Goffin produced some of the greatest pop hits of the 1960s, including "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," "Take Good Care of My Baby," "Some Kind of Wonderful," "The Loco-Motion," the controversial "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)," "One Fine Day," "(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman," and The Byrds' underappreciated psychedelic masterpiece "Wasn't Born to Follow," just to name a few.  The tracks show her pop savvy as well as her ability to successfully (and easily) adapt emerging musical trends.

After a few failed attempts to make her own popular recordings as a solo artist (and as a member of The City), Tapestry's success seemed to come out of nowhere.  Sure, her previous album, Writer, didn't make a dent in the charts.  But given her history of hits, it was only a matter of time before she broke through.  Tapesty also managed to tap into the "singer/songwriter" boom that was in part initiated by Bob Dylan's hermitage resulting for his now infamous motorcycle accident in late 1966.  Record labels went scrambling for the next Dylan, uncovering some interesting artists along the way.  Furthermore, the civil rights movements of the previous decade similarly inspired women to become more vocal, more independent, more daring in fields typically dominated by men.  Carole King gently captures the feminist zeitgeist of the era in an accessible manner, fusing folk-rock instrumentation with a solid cast of backing musicians (including Joni Mitchell and James Taylor) as well as the dependable production of Lou Adler.

There's no radical statement on Tapestry.  But there are no weak cuts either.  In fact, much of the material here is instantly recognizable to people who are unfamiliar with the name Carole King (I'm sure many fans of the TV show Gilmore Girls don't realize the show's theme song originates from this album).  She sings about heartache ("So Far Away," "It's Too Late") in ways most of her listeners can relate to.  She also simply captures the feelings of being in love and friendship ("I Feel the Earth Move," "You've Got a Friend") without relying too heavily on sentimentality.  Though her versions of "You've Got a Friend," "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" aren't definitive, she owns them here.

For years, Tapestry remained the best selling album by a female solo artist.  In recent years, she has been surpassed by Alanis Morrissette's Jagged Little Pill and Shania Twain's Come On Over.  It's a shame that these new torch-bearers come nowhere eclipsing the quality of her only real significant work as a performer.

With this album, King moved into more experimental (for her) realms. Writing the entire album herself, without an outside lyricist, she moves away from the introspective songs of Tapestry and its immediate follow-ups to examine the lives of others, in particular of those less fortunate. It’s presented as a concept album of two unbroken suites of songs that all segue together. Moving beyond the spare arrangements of its predecessors, for Fantasy Carole scored brass and string arrangements and experimented with Latin and funk styles.

Naturally, moving outside of her comfort zone rubbed some people the wrong way. The mixed reviews on this very page speak for themselves. I, for one, love this album and think it’s her strongest musical statement since Tapestry itself. The high point of the A-side is the wondrous “That’s How Things Go Down,” perhaps Carole’s finest ballad since “So Far Away.” The B-side is captivating in the extreme, with three fine hit singles (“You Light Up My Life,” the Latin funk workout “Corazón” and “Believe in Humanity”) at its core. The more ambitious arrangements did have negative repercussions (see Wrap Around Joy), but for this album the string and brass arrangements work; most effectively on “Welfare Symphony,” which is almost the Carole King version of prog rock in the way it develops from a spare vocal/organ track to a full-blown orchestral piece.

Fantasy gets my vote as Carole King’s most underrated album, and deserves a lot more accolades than it generally receives.

Sometimes it's hard to argue with success.

Tapestry was the #1 selling album of 1971, it won Carole King a boatload of awards and dare I say, it deserved every one of its accolades. It seems odd in retrospect that such a quiet, unassuming album should be such an across-the-board smash hit and basically the architect for a whole new movement in popular music but there you are. Tapestry really was something of a quiet revolution. It literally changed how pop music sounded, was probably the first major 70’s pop album that really sounded like it was from the 70’s and not some late 1960’s holdover. There had been singer/songwriters before Carole King, but Tapestry was the album that broke the concept wide open and influenced a ton of other artists out there. There are performers who have built entire careers on attempts of emulating this album (Carly Simon for example).

Each of the songs is such a gem that it seems churlish to single out favourites, but the one-two-three punch of “I Feel the Earth Move,” “So Far Away” and “It’s Too Late” is one of the strongest start-offs for any album ever, each a deserved huge hit. “So Far Away” is especially affecting, as gorgeous and emotionally-affecting ballad as has ever been written. It’s funny, when I got the CD of this and re-listened to “It’s Too Late,” it didn’t sound like I remembered from hearing it on the radio as a kid. Well, actually it sounded the same as ever, but for some reason I imagined a string arrangement which was actually never there! I imagine part of this must have to do with Lou Adler’s brilliant production job; he lends the songs a sort of cinematic scope while keeping the instrumentation spare and the feel intimate. Not for nothing did “It’s Too Late” win the Grammy for Record of the Year.

Familiarity is the order of the day for the B-side, with Carole dipping into her back-catalogue for inspiration, including her first ever #1 hit (for The Shirelles), “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.” Critics of this album, and of King in particular, point to her version of “A Natural Woman,” complaining that “she’s no Aretha Franklin.” This is an unfair comparison; it’s true that she may lack the technical pyrotechnics of Aretha, but King’s slightly raspy yet charming voice is far from unpleasant, and has an emotional resonance all its own. A couple of other songs were parlayed into bigger hits by other artists (“You’ve Got a Friend” for James Taylor and “Where You Lead” for Barbra Streisand) but Carole’s originals are sublime (the former also winning a Grammy). Also of note: the live favourite “Smackwater Jack,” a sort of rousing gospel-tinged sing-along.

I’d recommend the 1999 Epic Legacy remaster of this enduring classic. Not only do you get crystalline sound and a nice reminiscence from the aforementioned James Taylor, but also a previously unreleased bonus tune from the same sessions, “Out in the Cold,” which is as good as the album’s other gems, though sounds a bit out-of-place coming after the obvious album-closer “A Natural Woman.” The live version of “Smackwater Jack” is nice but inessential. Epic Legacy also released a two-disc version in 2008, but I’d only recommend that for fanatical collectors and completists.

This album is a pretty startling bait-and-switch. The first five tracks on this album are as spellbinding and captivating as anything from her previous album, the classic Tapestry. It definitely lags after that, with inferior filler songs making up much of the album’s lackluster B-side, including ill-advised stabs at “country-rock.”

Still, it’s hard to argue with that amazing run of songs that start off the album. The funky “Brother, Brother” opens with a funky and appealing electric piano figure and is quite unlike anything else found in King’s catalogue. “It’s Going to Take Some Time” was a smash hit when covered by the Carpenters, but Carole’s version has more of an “edge.” It’s followed by the album’s big hit, the rollicking “Sweet Seasons,” and two superb “deep tracks,” “Some Kind of Wonderful” and the ethereal “Surely.”

A pity, then, that the album could not sustain that level of brilliance. One wonders if it wouldn’t have disappointed so much if King chose to interleave the best songs in with the lesser material. I find that is frequently a problem with King’s albums: she likes to stick her best songs all together right at the start of an album. Perhaps an experiment for the future: listen to this on shuffle play and see if I like it better.

The 1970s brought a legion of hugely successful, multi-platinum albums, and Carole King's Tapestry is one of them. The album is a textbook example of the art of "classic songwriting" and production, which means of course that the music within is well-crafted, well-produced, top-notch. Good as the songs may be, it doesn't possess the kick, innovation, or fire of the records of King's peers like Joni Mitchell or Laura Nyro, but it's certainly one of the better LA rock records of the era.

King earned a reputation, with one-time husband Gerry Goffin as a co-writer, as one of the best Brill Building writers of the 1960s. Some of pop music's biggest and most enduring hits came from the Goffin/King partnership, among them "The Locomotion," "Take Good Care of My Baby," and "Up on the Roof," and King reclaims some of those hits for herself on Tapestry, which quickly escalated into multi-platinum success.

Although this album boasts the cream of LA session musicians, it does retain a raw, earthy quality at some points, not least because of King's reedy, imperfect voice. Her songs are alternately bluesy and groove-based and soulful, intimate piano ballads, and her command of the piano is often simple but effective. "I Feel the Earth Move" is an excellent rousing opener, a sound she goes for again on the jaunty "Beautiful," groovy "Where You Lead," and R&B-accented, if a little heavy-handed, "Smackwater Jack."

King's traditional "singer-songwriter" tunes are among the album's finest and most beautifully melodic material. "So Far Away" and "Home Again" are quiet, intimate, and reflective, and the ubiquitous "You've Got a Friend" even has its place on the album. Her version of "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" features James Taylor and Joni Mitchell on backing vocals and is slowed down considerably from the sweet yet melancholy girl-group pop of The Shirelles' popular hit from a decade earlier, but it's still an effective album highlight, as is the enduring hit "It's Too Late," arguably the album's crowning achievement where melody meets a great singer-songwriter-rock arrangement.

The innate soulfulness in King's work becomes apparent on the slow, gritty "Way Over Yonder" and the closing "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," which has become something of a women's anthem over the decades. Her voice works well with this material, but can grate at times with its lack of depth and range. King had proved herself as a first-rate songwriter, but it's odd how songs as lyrically weak as "Tapestry" could have made it onto the album ahead of some of her better compositions.

_Tapestry_ is an essential part of the LA singer/songwriter era of the early '70s. An incorrect general consensus is that the early '70s singer/songwriter boom brought about samey, similar artists. King is not one of the most unique or innovative of that group - those honours go to Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, and Judee Sill - but there is no denying the influence and impact of this often first-rate album, which should be investigated.

"Child of Mine." That excellent song defined the style of Carole's numerous piano-based slow songs that were yet to come. That song also defines why I, personally, don't want to raise a child of mine in the world of today. Such a human(e) optimism would be completely empty now without isolating oneself with some community of the trustworthy from the sanctioning-forcing, individual destroying, cynical-commercial societies of the western world.

This album showcases Carole King as a writer, but also as a performer. Some of the songs are still quite '60s-like and hippy, which delights me now. "Eventually", "Raspberry Jam" and "Can't You Be Real" constitute a brilliant three to express that Carole King wasn't SOOoo Carole King yet! Unfortunately there are some very useless tracks, like "To Love"; "Up on the Roof" doesn't work as this album version either. Carole would do her thing more effectively on Tapestry and especially the underestimated Thoroughbred, but Writer was around first.

Whilst “Music” was my introduction to Carole King, I soon discovered “Tapestry” had all the ingredients necessary to turn it into a personal favorite; generally accepted as a land marking and trend defining album in the Pop/Rock category, “Tapestry” is also a pioneering example of a cross over of musical genres, blending the mentioned Pop and Rock traits with Jazz, Gospel, Country, Boogie or Blues influences, and most of all an underlying and inescapable Soul element; in fact I can easily imagine most of these songs, arranged and adapted for anyone in the Motown or Stax firmament;

But if the Goofin/King songwriting partnership where she’d been honing her skills, had been renowned for a long time, King had always avoided stepping into the spotlight; if divorcing Goffin may have played a role, James Taylor influence – coupled with his magically idiosyncratic guitar playing and singing - seems to have been the crucial factor in making her change her mind, and although not always with positive consequences, can’t be downplayed in the conception of this fine album (reciprocally balanced with King’s inestimable contributions in the initial steps of Taylor’s career) , which notably proved piano playing/singing Females were as entitled to have valid and fruitful careers, as Male counterparts such as Elton John – and although this parallelism would not hold in the future, giving the stature and value of the British at the time, this was in my opinion, no small compliment.

And even if I’m no unconditional supporter of all the solutions producer Lou Adler came up with to make this a gem as appealing as possible, and can’t for instance avoid finding the bath of strings on “You’ve Got a Friend” exaggerated and thus prefer Taylor’s version, or repudiate certain moments of blatant soppiness (such as the execrable “Will You Love Me…?”), this is an album that horizontally cuts across audience’s tastes, same as it does with genres, and there’s no known immunity against the talent, the exquisite songwriting and flair for tasty modulations, the Rocking vocal timbre brimming with Soul and Gospel inflections and bouncing piano playing, and notwithstanding the overemphasis put on heart-affaires, even the in-your-face honesty of the majority of the lyrics that Carole King proposes herein.