IT CAN EVEN MAKE ME CRY - JUST LIKE BEFORE The anticipation of grown-up feeling meets its actual reflection through the portal of the nostalgia show. Love either never came, or failed, or was sought in the wrong places. Something has gone horribly wrong for her between then and now. This provides the opportunity for the girl and the woman to meet each other face to face, like the old and young Houseman in Stoppard's Invention Of Love The songs are now back on the radio and the opportunity to sing along has returned for the woman who was once the girl. Hence this, their biggest ever British hit, is a song about youth meeting maturity and the ultimate limitation and failure of pop music By the time that you get to the latter records, things like 'Make Believe It's Your First Time' and 'Touch Me When We're Dancing' the effect is almost unbearable, half-literally the voice of a dying woman, her brother's way with a tune and an arrangement audibly faltering behind her.Įven in their earlier glory days, this discomfort is always present. Every song seems like a confidence entrusted to you, the listener, alone. None of this would be possible without the wonder that was Karen Carpenter's voice, my favourite in pop, with its remarkable capacity for intimacy, a sense of closeness and compassion that made Herb Alpert remark that listening to her sing was "almost like she had her head in your lap". This is achieved with a stoicism and a lack of grandstanding that makes their work amongst the most grown-up in pop, supported by memorable, spacious arrangements that allow the mood of the songs to truly breathe and allow the listener to enter into the world of the music. For me, The Carpenters stand as the absolute antithesis of easy listening, presenting song after song to the listener that look searchingly into what it means to be alive and face the likelihood of vulnerability and disappointment.
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