The Carpenters

Their first No. 1, the song that changed the duo's fate after Richard reworked the sheet music Herb Alpert had handed him. A song that several singers had passed over finally found its place when it met Karen's voice.

• Karen begins the first line in a range low for a woman (alto), almost in a whisper. Her breath, pressed close to the microphone, makes it sound as though she is singing right beside the listener.
• A piano accompaniment that rolls each beat into three (triplets) sets the unhurried gait of the whole song. It is known to be the result of Richard tidying the tempo and texture of the original.
• The short trumpet interlude in the middle (flugelhorn) recalls the soft brass color characteristic of the A&M that Alpert led.
• At the end, a wordless harmony of the siblings' voices, overdubbed dozens of times (overdubbing), slowly fades away. This choir-like wall the two built became the signature of the Carpenters sound.

A short jingle from a bank commercial caught in Richard's ear and was completed as a proper song. Capturing the first steps of a newly married couple, it cemented the siblings' wholesome image.

• In the opening, Karen's voice lies low and level, then brightens little by little toward the chorus. A manner of quiet resolve, rather than open emotion, gives the song its feeling.
• In the chorus the layered background harmonies suddenly spread wide, an effect Richard created by overlaying the two voices again and again.
• Woodwinds and soft strings carry color rather than rhythm, laying down a warm air like that of a wedding hall.
• The songs of Paul Williams and Roger Nichols, who wrote it, became most widely known through Carpenters' recordings.

Richard happened to hear Leon Russell's song on television and chose it. Of all their recordings, it shows most vividly, in their peak year, their knack for making someone else's song their own.

• Karen's vocal is known to be the practice take she sang to find her way before the real recording (guide vocal), used as it was. That unpolished first feeling only heightened the song's resigned loneliness.
• The opening begins with a sound like a slender woodwind melody, and throughout the first verse the accompaniment pulls back to a minimum, leaving only the voice.
• When the chorus arrives, brass and strings swell all at once. The contrast between hushed verse and bursting chorus forms the song's architecture.
• Telling the story of a woman waiting for a musician who has left her in a far more restrained voice than the original, it turned the original's abandon into a song of solitude.

Written by Richard with John Bettis, it was inspired by a fictional song whose title is only mentioned in an old film. It was an experiment in which the most wholesome of duos brought in the roughest of guitar sounds.

• The guitar solo that tears through the latter part of the song was played through a device that deliberately distorts the sound (fuzz). Session guitarist Tony Peluso played it; Richard is said to have written the opening melody and left the rest to improvisation.
• Setting a fuzz guitar solo on a ballad was a rare combination at the time. Richard recalled receiving letters from fans accusing them of selling out because of this song.
• Karen sings low and calm from beginning to end. The more composed the voice of the narrator giving up on love, the more the guitar behind her weeps in her place.
• At the end, the siblings' layered humming harmonies and the guitar fade out together (bringing the sound down gradually to a close), vanishing slowly.

A song that longs for a childhood spent listening to oldies on the radio, it is steeped in the memories of Richard, who grew up among his father's piles of records. On the album “Now & Then,” it flowed into a medley of old hits.

• After an introduction that opens on piano chords, Karen sings the first verse in a very low register. Her voice is subdued, like someone reminiscing aloud to herself.
• By the chorus, the siblings' layered background harmonies grow steadily thicker, and the longing sways between joy and sorrow.
• The song itself was built with simple harmonies and a clear-cut chorus, consciously modeled on the structure of early 1960s pop. Richard's reverence for the music of that era is written into the song's very form.
• On the album, the song leads into a medley of 1960s hits, linked by patter imitating a real radio DJ. It has long been cherished as the Carpenters' signature song, especially in Japan and Korea.

From the years when their popularity was slipping and her body was wasting away, this is the song Karen called her favorite of all her own recordings. Richard and Bettis wrote it together with Albert Hammond.

• It is a song in which a narrator worn out from chasing perfection confesses a wish to find love. Karen's careful, confessional voice seems to echo her own circumstances at the time.
• Rather than surging up into the high notes, Karen traces the rise and fall of emotion through subtle shifts of tone within her low-to-middle range.
• Strings and a soft electric piano fill in the background without pushing the rhythm forward. It showcases the sleek production of 1970s adult pop.
• Richard handled the production and arrangement himself. A brief layered harmony in the final chorus quietly closes the song.

Written by Rod Temperton, this song is from the solo album Karen made with Phil Ramone in New York in 1980. A version reworked by Richard first appeared on the 1989 Carpenters album “Lovelines,” while the original recording saw the light of day on the 1996 solo album, after Karen's death.

• She sings in a noticeably higher range than in her Carpenters days, in a soft, very breathy tone. Here you can hear the other voice Karen was searching for outside her brother's arrangements.
• The rhythm (groove) laid down by a lightly bouncing electric piano and bass comes to the fore. It is a passage steeped in Temperton's signature rhythm-and-blues sensibility.
• Instead of the Carpenters' method of stacking harmonies layer upon layer, what stands out is Ramone's recording approach, which sets a single lead vocal out in open space.
• Its mood is an invitation to revive a relationship between lovers, and you can sense Karen's intent to make it sound like the voice of a grown woman.

Recorded in April 1982 during a brief return home while she was in treatment in New York, this was the last recording of Karen's life. After she was gone, it appeared on the album “Voice of the Heart.”

• Karen reportedly regarded this recording as provisional and intended to sing it again later. That is why what remains is a plainer, almost raw voice.
• The center of her voice still lies in the low register, but there are passages where her breath sounds a little short. That faint tremor only draws the song closer.
• Richard is known to have polished this recording after Karen's death and included it on the album. Striking is the arrangement, which holds back the layered harmonies and leaves space so a single voice comes through clearly.
• A song of confession to the person by one's side in this very moment, its meaning weighs newly heavy when you listen knowing it was her last recording.