None of us singer-songwriters were known for our voices, and we had to get past that. I had to get past the fact that I wasn’t going to sound like Linda Ronstadt or Joni Mitchell or Carole King, but from Carole I learned that you can accept your own voice and work within your limitations, which was liberating. Danielle Haim Born as Carole King Klein in 1942, the New York-born and raised singer-songwriter first learned how to play the piano when she was still a small child. It was discovered by her parents her ability to identify a musical note with precision without an actual reference tone to go on. This rare talent was instrumental in shaping the young lady to become who the world knows better today as Carole King. At seventeen years of age, Carole King wed Gerry Goffin and had her first child, Louise Goffin. This was shortly after her first studio recording, The Right Girl, which was used as a promotional song at the time. After the couple quit college to support their child, it wasn’t long before both King and Coffin engaged in full-time songwriting. By 1968, the couple divorced and King, who was now making a name for herself as a singer and songwriter, took what were now two daughters with her to California. This move ultimately carved out a path for Carole King to evolve into one of the most beloved songstresses of all time. But you won’t find mention of “Music” in the hit Broadway musical about King’s life, “Beautiful,” nor in American Masters’ biographical film, Carole King: Natural Woman . Hell, you won’t even find it in King’s own memoir, the similarly titled “A Natural Woman,” in which she writes about “Tapestry” and the subsequent tour she played that year, then skips right over “Music” to the next chapter of her life.

Fantasy is the fifth album by American singer-songwriter Carole King, released in 1973. At the time of its release, it only reached number six on the US Billboard 200 album chart, but has remained highly regarded by her fans over the ensuing decades. Presented as a sort of song cycle, the album opens and closes with two versions of the title song and the songs on each side segue directly into one another.Carole King performing in London in 1970. Photograph: Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns MC Taylor, Hiss Golden Messenger

On February 10, a live album, Home Again, will be released digital ly via Ode Records and Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment. Pre-save the album here . The radical thing about Tapestry is its refusal to be iconic. The original Shirelles version of Will You Love Me Tomorrow, arguably the best song of the 60s, is so clearly a masterpiece that King’s own version could never compete with it. Instead, she sings it slowly and plaintively, with no flattering reverb, making the answer to the title, heartbreakingly, “Probably not”. Ouch! Lucy Dacus When you write a song it’s almost mystical. It feels as if the words just come out and it can be months or even years later you realise: “ That’s what was happening.” I’d love to know who those songs are about. I think female artists are great at just letting it all show. As artists, my sisters and I feel like having Carole always in our lives definitely inspired us. Margo PriceTapestry was one of the first records my mother and I bonded over. It was so meaningful to sing in unison with my mom to a guttural, honest account performed by a stranger to whom I felt so inexplicably connected: a friend, a sister, a mother, and somebody’s daughter, a low voice and an attitude. From that point onward, I carried her music and spirit with me. Kent, David (1993). Australian Chart Book 1970–1992 (illustrateded.). St Ives, N.S.W.: Australian Chart Book. p.166/167. ISBN 0-646-11917-6. Tapestry was around our house when I was growing up, but I connected with it more when I moved to California because it’s the blueprint for anybody who’s starting off in songwriting in LA. Carole King made this incredible transformation from Brill Building songwriter to performer, but she didn’t go crazy or self-destruct. She was able to remain a good parent and – especially now I’m a father – she has always been a role model for me. Carole King ... ‘My life has been a tapestry.’ Photograph: Jim McCrary/Ode Records / Lou Adler Archive I brought Hank Cicalo, my recording engineer from Los Angeles, out to Central Park to record the show as it might possibly become an album,” Adler explains. “Then I had the notion, having done the film Monterey Pop [Adler had produced the groundbreaking 1967 music festival together with John Phillips] I felt that something this big should be filmed. I had no idea what I was going to do with the film at that time, but I felt that something this important should be documented.”

King didn’t need the advice. The estimable guitarist Danny Kortchmar, whose work shone on both “Tapestry” and “Music,” says that King knew exactly where she was going in the studio. “Carole really knows what she wants,” he told me in a recent interview. “She’s a very astute producer and arranger.” Tapestry is part of the American songbook. I heard those songs even before I knew who she was. I love that book Girls Like Us, a trio of biographies of Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and Carole King and the story behind Tapestry. The record before it [1970’s Writer] hadn’t performed that well, so she had it in her head that this one had to be great. She was meditating a lot. She was probably in some mental-spiritual prime, and then when she realised what fame entailed she was like: “No way.” She cared more about her personal life. New film features exclusive interviews & never before seen performance footage from her landmark 1973 concert on Central Park's famed Great Lawn. When my sisters and I were growing up, Tapestry was a key record in the house. Our mum also loved James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, who played and sang on it, so it was on in the car a lot. Our mum was from Philly on the east coast, so it was always in my mind that Carole was also a Jewish east-coast girl. She’d write these amazing, emotive songs and sing them in an almost optimistic or carefree voice. King, producer Lou Adler and Taylor in Los Angeles during sessions for Tapestry in 1970. Photograph: Jim McCrary/Redferns Stephin Merritt, the Magnetic FieldsJanuary 5, 2023 - The brand new feature-length concert documentary “ Home Again: Carole King Live In Central Park,” which presents musical icon Carole King’s triumphant May 26, 1973 homecoming concert on The Great Lawn of New York City’s Central Park before an estimated audience of 100,000, will premiere January 19 at New York’s IFC Film Center via Abramorama. The film will then be released wide on February 9 (also King’s birthday) streaming exclusively on The Coda Collection. Directed by George Scott and produced by Lou Adler and John McDermott, the film presents the complete multi-camera 16mm footage filmed and recorded by Adler in 1973 but never before released. But to me, this is more What's Going On (Carole's Version). And I'm like... Carole, fire your bongo player. Carole King wrote a lot of great soul songs, but she's not a soul singer, and so she seems very out of place with the kind of loose, rolling funk. And (pretty ballad "That's How Things Go Down" aside) the hooks just are not there.