Carole King
A pianist who began writing songs for other people's voices at seventeen, and at twenty-nine filled an era's living rooms with her own.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The people around her ⏳🌊
- FriendshipNeil Sedaka
A friend from her Brooklyn days, he scored a hit in 1959 with "Oh! Carol," named after her, and King answered with "Oh! Neil."
- CollaboratorGerry Goffin
Her first husband and lyric-writing partner, he co-wrote countless hits with her in the 1960s, and in 1990 they entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame together.
- PatronageDon Kirshner
The publisher who ran Aldon Music, he hired the teenage husband-and-wife songwriting team and placed their songs with singers.
- InfluenceAretha Franklin
Her rendition made “A Natural Woman” a classic, and that interpretation became the benchmark when King later sang the song again in her own voice.
- ColleagueLou Adler
The head of Ode Records, he produced King's albums from The City through “Tapestry.”
- FriendshipJames Taylor
The friend who brought the stage-frightened King out before an audience, he shared “You've Got a Friend” with her and toured with her again in their 2010 reunion.
I. A piano in Brooklyn · 1942–1958
(Birth) She was born Carol Joan Klein (Carol Joan Klein) in February 1942 in Manhattan, New York City, New York. Her father, Sidney Klein, was a New York City firefighter, and her mother, Eugenia, a teacher. Theirs was a middle-class Jewish household, and the family soon moved to Brooklyn, where they raised her. (Mother) The first person to teach her piano was her mother. She sat down at the keys at around the age of four and, as she later recalled, was a child who could pick out notes just as she heard them. She moved through school so quickly that she was promoted ahead of her peers, and this precocity laid the groundwork for her later work as a teenage songwriter. (Rock and roll) In the mid-1950s the doo-wop and rock and roll pouring out of the radio captivated her. At James Madison High School she formed a vocal group with friends called the Co-Sines (Co-Sines), and around this time she began using the name Carole King. She carried songs she had written herself to record labels and music publishers in Manhattan, and in 1958 she released her first single on ABC-Paramount, though it drew no notice. (College) That same year, at sixteen, she entered Queens College. There she met Gerry Goffin, who would become her husband and lyric-writing partner, and she earned pocket money cutting demo recordings for publishers with Paul Simon, then equally unknown. The path that was opening before her was first that of someone who makes songs, rather than someone who sings them.
II. 1650 Broadway · 1959–1967
(Marriage) In 1959, at seventeen, she married Gerry Goffin, and their first daughter was born the following year. By day each worked to make a living; by night they wrote songs. The division of labor was Goffin on lyrics, King on music. A few years later a second daughter was born. (Kirshner) The man who hired them was Don Kirshner of Aldon Music, whose office was at 1650 Broadway in Manhattan. In small rooms barely big enough for a single piano, songwriters wrote side by side, an ecosystem that would later be called the Brill Building sound. A year earlier, when her Brooklyn friend Neil Sedaka had a hit with “Oh! Carol,” named after her, Goffin and King wrote “Oh! Neil” as an answer song, and she sang it herself. (First No. 1) “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” given to the Shirelles in 1960, reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart that January. King even wrote the string arrangement herself. There followed the Drifters' “Up on the Roof,” “The Loco-Motion,” sung by their babysitter Little Eva, and the Chiffons' “One Fine Day,” while the Beatles recorded “Chains.” Her own recording of “It Might as Well Rain Until September” was also a hit in 1962. Years later Amy Winehouse recorded “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” as well, and that recording was released after her death, in 2011. (Natural Woman) In 1967 Jerry Wexler of Atlantic handed them a title, and the song that came of it, “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” reached its summit in the voice of Aretha Franklin.
From the years when she and Goffin wrote for other people's voices, this was the first song King sang herself to become a big hit. Released on Dimension Records, the label Kirshner founded, it was especially loved in Britain.
- The story goes that King's own recording of a song originally written for another singer was released just as it was. It keeps a plainness that sounds less like a proper singer than a songwriter sketching the outline of a song.
- Her voice at around twenty is light and bright; heard against the low, composed timbre of “Tapestry” years later, the change across a decade is unmistakable.
- The contrast of a teenager's longing for a sweetheart who is away all summer, sent off brightly on a buoyant rhythm, sounds like a textbook case of the era's teen pop.
- In its tight construction, where intro·verse·chorus follow one another without a wasted bar inside so short a span, you hear the craft of the 1650 Broadway writing rooms, which polished three-minute radio songs like a factory.
III. A door to the west · 1968–1970
(Divorce) After splitting from Goffin in 1968, King took her two daughters to Los Angeles and settled in Laurel Canyon. She had lost her songwriting partner and her husband at a single stroke, and now she had to write her own lyrics or find a new lyricist. (The City) There she formed the band The City with guitarist Danny Kortchmar and bassist Charles Larkey, and in 1968 they released the album “Now That Everything's Been Said.” The label was Ode, run by producer Lou Adler. But King's reluctance to perform live made the record hard to promote, and the album barely sold. For someone used to writing songs for others, standing in front of people was still unfamiliar. (Larkey) In 1970 she married Charles Larkey. That same year she released her first solo album, “Writer,” which, true to its title, was close to a declaration of her start as a writer singing the songs she had written herself. Sales were negligible, but the colors of what was to come, an unadorned piano and an unvarnished voice, were already there. (Taylor) The decisive turn came through James Taylor. They grew close as she played piano on his recordings, and Taylor urged her to sing her own songs onstage. Joining him at his concerts in 1970, King at last learned how to sing in front of an audience. The community of Los Angeles musician friends who moved in and out of one another's sessions became the ground for her second beginning.
IV. Tapestry · 1971–1972
(Recording) In January 1971 she recorded “Tapestry” at A&M Studios in Hollywood, with Lou Adler producing. Close colleagues joined her, among them Danny Kortchmar, her husband Charles Larkey, James Taylor and Joni Mitchell. Instead of lavish arrangements, the approach put piano and voice at the very center. (Reinterpretation) Alongside new songs, the album included numbers she had given to others in the 1960s. “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” was reborn as a slow confession, and “A Natural Woman,” unlike Aretha Franklin's towering reading, as a low, quiet monologue. It was a process of reclaiming, in her own voice on the threshold of thirty, songs that had once borrowed other people's voices. The broad critical consensus is that a woman's independence and recovery as she starts over after divorce runs through the whole album. (Peak) Released in February, the album spent 15 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart and stayed on the chart for nearly six years. “It's Too Late,” written with lyricist Toni Stern, held the top of the singles chart for five straight weeks. At the 1972 Grammys she won in four categories: Album of the Year·Record of the Year·Song of the Year·Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Before all this, on June 18, 1971, she had played her first headlining concert at Carnegie Hall. (Success) “Music,” released at the end of the same year, also went to No. 1. Yet rather than revel in fame, she tried to protect her family and her everyday life. She had two children with Larkey, and she did not easily give up the quiet way of living she had kept since her songwriting days.
The first track on “Tapestry,” and the song paired with “It's Too Late” on a single. It shatters the image of a quiet songwriter from the opening bars.
- The piano opens by pounding the same figure with force, a single keyboard doing the work of a rhythm instrument as well. From the very first track it announces that King's piano is the engine of this album.
- The vocal is far rougher and more forceful than on the other tracks. As befits a song that likens the trembling of a body in love to the feeling of the ground shaking, the voice too pushes forward as if out of breath.
- Bass (Charles Larkey) and drums lock tightly onto the piano's beat, generating a heavy momentum despite the modest lineup.
- Danny Kortchmar's electric guitar cuts in briefly, lending the song a rock texture.
Written with lyricist Toni Stern, the song held No. 1 on the singles chart for five weeks and won the Grammy for Record of the Year the following year. It is a breakup song that seems to echo the period when King was starting over after her divorce.
- Its hallmark is the calm way it admits a relationship that has cooled through no one's fault. Speaking of a breakup not with wailing but with a composure close to resignation, it stood apart from the pop breakup songs of its day.
- Soft, wistful harmonies that stack one more note on top of do-mi-sol (seventh chords) are used throughout, wrapping the whole song in a muted, jazz-like color.
- In the instrumental break, Danny Kortchmar's guitar solo is followed by a soprano saxophone solo from Curtis Amy. Together the two solos briefly open the song up like an instrumental, giving it room to breathe.
- The drums never drive hard, holding a loose, swaying beat that fits the unhurried mood exactly.
King gave this song to Aretha Franklin in 1967 and sang it herself 4 years later on “Tapestry.” It shows how different a confession the same song becomes depending on who sings it.
- Where Aretha Franklin's original soars gospel-style to the very end, King sings in a low register, almost as if speaking, so that it sounds like a private monologue.
- The piano accompaniment holds the center of the song, building emotion through the movement of the harmony alone, without any lavish arrangement.
- The restraint of adding just a single degree of force in the chorus, rather than letting the voice break loose, feels like the caution of a songwriter handling her own song.
- At the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors, when Aretha Franklin sang this song and King rose in the audience to cheer, the moment is remembered as one in which two interpretations met in a single place.
V. After the peak · 1973–1980
(Park) In May 1973 she gave a free concert in New York's Central Park, drawing an audience of around 100,000. She was a different person from the woman who, a few years earlier, had refused to tour out of stage fright. “Fantasy,” released the same year, was a song-cycle album about poverty and city life, an attempt to look beyond personal confession toward society. (Jazzman) In 1974, “Jazzman” from “Wrap Around Joy” climbed to No. 2 on the singles chart. The following year she teamed up with the children's author Maurice Sendak to create the music for the animated “Really Rosie,” turning her hand to songs for children as well. With “Thoroughbred” in 1976 she brought her relationship with Ode to a close. (Loss) In 1976 she separated from Larkey, and the following year she married Rick Evers and released “Simple Things” on Capitol. Evers died of a drug overdose in 1978. The albums of this period did not sell as well as those of the “Tapestry” years, and she chose to take a step back from the clamor of the city and the industry. (Idaho) In the late 1970s she moved to the mountains of Idaho. Living on remote land without even reliable electricity, she began a life close to nature. In 1980 she released “Pearls,” on which she sang old songs she had written with Goffin, and one of them, “One Fine Day,” returned to the singles chart. It was an album that embraced the years she had left behind in song rather than in resentment.
It climbed as high as No. 2 on the singles chart at a time when her post-“Tapestry” albums were slipping down the charts. The lyrics were by David Palmer.
- Tom Scott's saxophone steps forward like a lead character from the first bar to the last. True to its title, the song is built so that its praise of a player is borne out by the playing itself.
- King's vocals are brighter and lighter than on “Tapestry,” seeming to carry the confidence of a time when she had overcome stage fright and was playing large concerts.
- The rhythm section delivers the sleek groove characteristic of Los Angeles session players of the mid-1970s.
- As a song about music's power to console and uplift, it can also sound like a confession of her own, as one who had lived her life as a songwriter.
VI. Between the mountains and the stage · 1981–2009
(Environment) After settling in Idaho, King devoted herself for many years to the campaign to protect the forests and wilderness of the northern Rocky Mountains. She backed legislation that would place vast tracts of old-growth forest under protection (the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act), even testifying at congressional hearings. She also campaigned openly for Democratic candidates. She remarried in 1982 but separated in 1989. (Comeback) Eric Clapton played guitar on her 1989 album “City Streets.” In 1990 she and Gerry Goffin were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as songwriters. In 1992 she contributed “Now and Forever” to the film “A League of Their Own,” and in 1994 she appeared as an actor in the Broadway musical “Blood Brothers.” (Celine) In 1997 she co-wrote “The Reason,” on Celine Dion's “Let's Talk About Love,” and lent her voice to the recording. The following year she shared the stage of VH1's “Divas Live” with Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Aretha Franklin and others, showing what a classic her songs had become for the next generation of divas. (Independence) In 2000 she re-recorded “Where You Lead,” used as the theme song of the TV series “Gilmore Girls,” with her daughter. In 2001 she released “Love Makes the World” on her own label, Rockingale. In the mid-2000s she went on the Living Room Tour, weaving songs and stories at a single piano on a stage dressed up like a living room. She had, in effect, made a place for herself where she could work on her own terms without a major label.
VII. Once more, a friend · 2010–2026
(Reunion) In 2010 she toured with James Taylor on the Troubadour Reunion Tour. Ahead of the tour, “Live at the Troubadour,” a live album capturing their 2007 concert for the Troubadour's 50th anniversary, came out in 2010 and debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard album chart. It was a chance to sing the same songs again with the friend who had helped her conquer her stage fright. (Retrospect) In 2012 she published her memoir, “A Natural Woman,” setting down in her own words a life that ran from a Brooklyn childhood through the songwriting cubicle and Laurel Canyon to Idaho. The following year she became the first woman to receive the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. In June 2014 Gerry Goffin, her first husband and lifelong songwriting partner, died. (Musical) That same year “Beautiful,” a musical about her early years, opened on Broadway and enjoyed a long run. At the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors, Aretha Franklin sang “A Natural Woman,” and the sight of King leaping to her feet in the audience to cheer was widely talked about. In 2016 she performed “Tapestry” in its entirety, from start to finish, in London's Hyde Park. (Induction) In 2021 she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame again, this time as a performer. Taylor Swift, who gave the induction speech, spoke about the example King had set for her and sang “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.” Having begun as someone who wrote songs for others and gone on to open the path of the singer-songwriter, she has long made Idaho her base, raising her voice for the protection of nature.
King has said she wrote it as if in reply after hearing a line in a James Taylor song about being unable to find a friend when lonely. 40 years later, when the two sang it together on the Troubadour Reunion Tour, it was completed as a song of friendship.
- On the “Tapestry” sessions James Taylor added acoustic guitar and harmony vocals. Taylor's own version, released the same year, reached No. 1 on the singles chart, so that one song became a signature for two friends.
- The piano opens by spreading its chords in wide intervals, and the whole song flows at an unhurried pace, as if in an embrace.
- As befits a song promising to come running whenever called, King's voice stays at the pitch of someone speaking at your side rather than pushing hard.
- On the live recording of the 2010 Troubadour reunion concerts, the two trade the song line by line, bringing out still more clearly the nature of a song originally written as a conversation.
Lesser-known stories
When her Brooklyn friend Neil Sedaka scored a hit in 1959 with “Oh! Carol,” Goffin and King promptly wrote an answer song, “Oh! Neil,” which King sang herself. It was a kind of witty reply to the fashion for name songs, but the single barely sold. Buried only by her later fame, it is a record showing that she first knew failure as a singer. While at Queens College she earned money making demo recordings for publishers with Paul Simon, who was still unknown. Both later looked back on this work; it is a scene of two songwriters who would come to define American popular music of the 1960s, starting from the same line, playing other people's songs. The cat at the window in the cover photograph of “Tapestry” is Telemachus, King's own cat. The photo was taken by Jim McCrary at her home in Laurel Canyon. That the image for an album that sold tens of millions of copies came not from a studio but from an ordinary living-room window fits exactly with the unpretentious, everyday feeling the album stood for. In 1975 King made the music for the animated “Really Rosie” with Maurice Sendak, author of the picture book “Where the Wild Things Are.” With Sendak writing the lyrics and King the music and vocals, the project later carried over into a stage work as well. Children's work is often pushed into the footnotes of an adult pop star's career, but this was a collaboration she chose at the busiest time of her life.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Demo
(Word origin) A shortening of the English demonstration (showing, presentation). The sense of a recording made to show others what a song is like is contained right in the word. (In pop) A simple sample recording a songwriter makes to introduce a song to singers or record companies. Often it conveys the melody and mood with nothing but a voice and a single piano or guitar, without elaborate arrangement. It is like serving the judges a small tasting plate before the finals of a cooking contest. Sometimes the tasting is so good that it goes straight to the table in place of the main dish, and Carole King's early recordings and Little Eva's “The Loco-Motion” are often cited as examples. (Elsewhere) In Korean, demo usually means a protest staged in the streets. The origin is the same, but what it refers to is entirely different.
Brill Building sound
(Word origin) The Brill Building is a Manhattan building named after the Brill brothers, owners of a clothing store on its 1st floor. (In pop) A collective term for the pop music made from the late 1950s to the early 1960s by the music publishers and songwriters clustered in the Brill Building on Broadway in Manhattan, New York, and the nearby building at 1650 Broadway. Songwriters wrote all day in small rooms furnished with a piano, and the publishers matched the songs with various singers. It resembles classes preparing performances at the same time in small classrooms ahead of the school festival, each spurred by the singing next door to try to make a better song. Aldon Music, where Carole King and Gerry Goffin worked, was strictly speaking at 1650 Broadway, but it is usually grouped with this movement.
Singer-songwriter
(Word origin) A compound of the English singer (one who sings) and songwriter (one who writes songs). (In pop) A musician who sings the songs they have written themselves; the term is used especially for the early-1970s movement of artists singing their own songs that calmly confide personal experience and feeling. Before that, songwriter and singer were often separate people in pop. It can be likened to choosing your own diary entry for the class anthology instead of something someone else wrote for you, and reading it aloud yourself. Carole King's “Tapestry” is counted as the defining album of this movement.
Music publishing
(In pop) The business of managing a song's copyright, introducing songs to singers and record companies, and collecting the money that comes in when a song is used on records·broadcasts·films and so on, to share it with the songwriter. The key point is that it deals with songs themselves, not books. If there were a classmate who gathered poems written by friends, got them printed in other classes and the school newspaper, and handed the original author a piece of candy each time one ran, the job would be much like that friend's. Don Kirshner's Aldon Music was exactly this kind of company. (Elsewhere) In everyday usage, publishing means printing and issuing books or magazines.
Royalty
(Word origin) The English royalty originally meant the rights of the king (royal), and today's meaning comes from the fee that those who mined minerals on the king's land paid to the king. (In pop) A fee that songwriters·singers·producers receive each time a song or recording is sold or used. What sets it apart is that it is not a one-time payment but keeps coming in for as long as the song is used. If you agreed that another class would give you one eraser per game every time they borrowed the rules of a board game you invented, that eraser would be a royalty. An album that sells for decades, like “Tapestry,” brings its songwriter royalties for a long time. (Elsewhere) In English, royalty can also refer to the royal family itself.
Seventh chord
(In pop) A chord made by stacking one more note on top of a basic three-note chord such as do·mi·sol, giving four notes. The added note tints the basic chord with a touch of tension and color, lending it a soft, wistful or jazzily sophisticated feel. It is like letting a single drop of syrup fall into white milk, which is still milk but tastes much deeper. One reason “It's Too Late” sounds both lonely and gently glowing is its generous use of such chords.
Session musician
(Word origin) Session means a single set meeting or period of time. The term comes from calling the occasion of playing together in a recording studio for a set time a session. (In pop) A professional musician who is not a regular member of any particular band but is called in to play on recordings for many different singers. Reading charts quickly and grasping a song's mood at once are essential skills. Think of the friend who takes turns playing piano accompaniment for several classes' performances in the school play. Outstanding Los Angeles session musicians also played on “Tapestry” and “Jazzman.” (Elsewhere) In computing a session means a single period of connected use, and in a legislature it means a sitting.