Karen and Richard Carpenter would seem to have everything, right? They make a good living. They have the thanks of the nation’s grateful Patti Page freaks. And they’ve got each other.
But are they happy? Oh, no. They want more. They want people to take them seriously.
Every time Karen and Richard are interviewed, they complain about cynical old music critics who put them down for being wholesome and clean. Sometimes, they get so worked up on the subject that they let out with something like, “Gosh darn those old smarty-pantses, anyway.”
You see, in the music business, wholesome and clean are considered lightweight. Getting scuffed up a little is believed to lead to meaningful musical insights. It is a questionable theory. Following that logic, laying in a doorway swigging Vitalis is excellent training for superstardom.
This obsession that the Carpenters have with wanting to be considered heavy has lead to the recording of something like their new album, Passage.
Personally, I found their 1975 recording of “Please Mr. Postman” to be a deeply significant song. You had to listen closely to the lyrics, but that was obviously not enough for two musicians as heavily into grooviness as Karen and Richard.
Like, would you believe a song which features Karen Carpenter and Che Guevara? (Wouldn’t that just look terrif on a marquee in Vegas?) The song is “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” from the revolutionary rock opera Evita.
The song includes a lengthy, dramatic introduction [featuring] a cast of tens. More than a hundred members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic also were brought in to support Karen’s rendition of one of communism’s most musical moments.
Showing their upfront tolerance of other systems of government as well is another intended blockbuster, the Carpenters’ version of “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft.” That’s the interplanetary peace song that was originally done by Klaatu.
The song calls up the image of sending Karen and Richard out to greet any other life forms that attempt to contact earth. You know, to tell them about how aliens have to register at the post office and [stuff] like that. Of course, there is always the possibility that the visitors will take over the bodies of Richard and Karen, but that is a chance we will just have to take.
At least two other wildly divergent songs for the Carpenters are included, “B’wana She No Home” and “Man Smart (Woman Smarter).” Apparently Karen is trying to answer criticism that she is so white she is invisible. Both songs have calypso roots, but they have been repotted and put on a coffee table.
A little more standard Carpenter fare is “All You Get from Love is a Love Song,” in which an affair which shatters someone’s life is “a dirty old shame.”
You get this image of Richard (who chooses and arranges this wide variety of material) searching frantically for the most unlikely stuff to do, and then, Karen singing it just like Karen Carpenter. On “Two Sides,” Karen laments that “there is another side of me.” It is her left side and it looks quite a bit like the right side.
So, you know, as bizarre as some of the material is, Carpenters fans will be pleased with the result. The cynical music critics still won’t take them seriously. If I thought it would make them feel better, though, I would call them “unwholesome.”