King, Carole (1942—) | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Carole King has had two of the most successful careers in rock history: first as a member of early rock 'n' roll's best known songwriting team, and then as the best-selling singer/songwriter of the 1970s. Along the way, she proved there was a place in rock 'n' roll for someone who wrote and sang pleasant, unpretentious songs, without stage theatrics, sexual abandon, or any other gimmicks.

Born on February 9, 1942, Carol Klein started writing songs at an early age. By the time she reached her teens she was riding thesubway from her Brooklyn home into Manhattan, where she shopped her tunes on Tin Pan Alley (where most of the day's pop hits were cranked out in assembly line fashion). Her first recording (using her stage name Carole King) was "Oh Neil," an answer to "Oh Carol" recorded by Neil Sedaka, and she hit the Top Forty in 1962 with "It Might as Well Rain until September." But by that time she was having more success as a songwriter for others. King met lyricist Gerry Goffin in 1960; they married soon thereafter and divorced in1967. Along the way, they wrote many of the most enduring songs in early rock 'n' roll: "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?," "Take Good Care Of My Baby," and "The Loco-Motion" (written for their baby-sitter, who recorded under the name Little Eva). Together with their contemporaries Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Goffin and King made standard pop formulas seem fresh and alive. Though they wrote in a small office around the corner from the Brill Building, their melodies and lyrics were expansive: simple but original, memorable and timeless. (Their only brush with controversy came with a 1964 dealing with domestic violence, "He Hit Me and It Felt Like a Kiss.") In 1963 John Lennon and Paul McCartney stated their ambition to be the British Goffin and King.

Ironically, it was rock groups like the Beatles who wrote their own material that ultimately ended Tin Pan Alley's dominance over the pop charts, and the couple soon found themselves unable to make hits. After divorcing Goffin, King went back to recording her own songs, first as the frontwoman for the three-piece rock group The City. Their one 1968 release failed, and King decided to go it alone. Her first solo effort, 1970's Writer, failed to make a splash though in retrospect it was excellent: she covered a variety of pop and rock styles with lively, accessible melodies; unassuming, gentle vocals; and for good measure she threw in one song from her Tin Pan Alley days. With few variations, she stuck to this formula during the multiplatinum years that followed.

A year later, the general public—primed by successful soft-rock singer/songwriters Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; and James Taylor—was ready for King. Tapestry was an immediate smash, a seemingly endless source of AM radio hits: "I Feel The Earth Move," "So Far Away," "It's Too Late," and her own versions of "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," "You've Got A Friend," and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman." The themes were easily understood, upbeat though touched with sadness, intelligent but not intellectual—a Joni Mitchell for the masses. The record sold 15 million copies, and for a span of several years was the best selling LP of all time.

The pattern continued with Music and Rhymes and Reasons, but the backlash came against her ambitious 1973 concept album Fantasy. Critics didn't want to hear her view on the world's ills, though in hindsight it's a remarkably affecting, coherent piece of work. After two more huge hit singles, "Nightbird" and "Jazzman" from 1974's Wrap Around Joy, King watched her album sales steadily decline. However, her gentle piano-based approach could still be heard in artists from Christine McVie to lesbian icon Cris Williamson. In 1980 King resorted to an entire album of songs from Goffin and King's heyday, Pearls. "One Fine Day" was a hit single, but it didn't reverse the trend: New Wave and heavy metal were sweeping singer/songwriters off the pop landscape, and in the early 1980s King fared no better than Taylor, Mitchell, Carly Simon or Janis Ian. After 1983's Speeding Time, she virtually retired.

In 1990, Goffin and King were elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in 1996 the Alison Anders film Grace of My Heart loosely portrayed King's life. By the late 1990s, King was justly hailed as a pioneer. Her sincerity and gift for deceptively simple melody were a profound influence on artists from Mariah Carey to Alanis Morissette, and King came out of a long hiatus in 1998 with the single "Anyone At All," the theme from Nora Ephron's film You've Got Mail.

Perone, James E. Carole King: A Bio-bibliography. Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood Press, 1999.

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