I didn’t grow up listening to The Carpenters. My parents didn’t listen to soft rock at all in the ‘70s. Mom jammed out to The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. Dad preferred Willie Nelson and Jerry Jeff Walker. The mildest music I remember seeing in their record collections was stuff like James Taylor, Bread, and Rita Coolidge.
However, my parents thought the music of their youth was too wild, sexual, and secular for good Christian kids going to a Christian school. Instead, as kids in the ‘80s and ‘90s, we listened to Contemporary Christian Music, a genre that borrowed its musical ideas wholesale from soft rock. Known colloquially as CCM, it combined clean harmonies and warm, straightforward production with traditional gospel motifs and lots of evangelical lyrical content.
It was soft, barely rock, and we listened to lots of it.
By the time I learned who The Carpenters were in college, I had journeyed through alternative and classic rock, only to emerge into indie rock and the early stages of rock snobbery. I had no time for a couple of harmonizing siblings who sang tenderly about idealistic love atop flowery piano runs and punchless pop. The melodies and orchestration felt more like Muzak than music to me. I was far too cool for Richard and Karen Carpenter.
The duo reappeared in the late ‘00s , thanks to a talented drummer friend of mine. He randomly asked me one day over coffee if I’d ever really listened to The Carpenters. I quickly dismissed such notions. Surely, my ears were meant for better things. His response was simple:
“Go to YouTube and look up Karen Carpenter.”
Curiosity piqued, I obeyed, and my opinion was changed forever. Not only was Karen good, but she was really good. I mean REALLY good. Clip after clip showcased different iterations of The Carpenters, both live performances and television specials, wherein Karen kept the audience enthralled with her drumming skills.
My response was instantaneous:
“This. Is. Amazing. Why don’t more people know about this?”
He shrugged his shoulders, and we started another clip.
That’s not to say that I went out the next day, scouring record shops for used copies of Close to You, The Carpenters, A Song for You, or Now and Then (though that last one has really great cover art). My tastes were still quite rock-centered. I was much more interested in learning about other music of the ‘60s and ‘70s – the stuff that presaged my treasured punk, post-punk, and New Wave influences.
But I still enjoyed watching clips of Karen drumming, because, not only was she a great drummer, but she obviously loved being a drummer. And I found her on-stage attitude and personality so compelling.
In my favorites, she careened around the stage, effortlessly keeping impeccable time across a series of drum kits – some large, some small, some filled with various percussion instruments. And she was loving it. Eating up every bit of attention the audience gave her. It was electric.
So, when I heard that University of Texas Press was releasing a book entitled Why Karen Carpenter Matters, I was instantly intrigued and more than a little curious. While I’ve read and reviewed my fair share of 33 1/3’s, and I’ve definitely spent time reassessing my own biases about music, The Carpenters would be new territory for me.
Outside of those YouTube clips and some generic cultural awareness of their songs, I had very little experience with the music. My goal was to set aside my preconceived notions and approach the book as the reformed jaded hipster I hoped I’d become.
And let me tell you – Karen Tongson delivered.
Over the course of 120+ pages, she provides a tightly crafted narrative that’s a respectful, reverential, and realistic representation of the duo’s place in musical history. It’s obvious that Tongson reveres The Carpenters – specifically Karen. She resists hagiography by focusing on siblings as a creative force and how Karen was the face and guiding light of their act.
The book is equal parts memoir and character study, as we’re treated to the author’s personal history with the music. Having an affinity for the music because it’s important to your cultural heritage is one thing. But it’s something else entirely to have the music swirl around you constantly because your entire family performs the songs throughout the Philippines as part of their live act for a large swath of your childhood.
Tongson also outlines myriad instances in her youth and adolescence when she tried to introduce The Carpenters to her friends. I related to those stories of slipping in music that you knew wasn’t necessarily cool, but you loved anyway because you hoped to make new converts.
The author discusses about how she related to Karen’s tomboy nature, specifically her love of culturally masculine symbols like sports (especially baseball), jeans, and drumming. She speaks openly about how she and other LQBTQ+ persons have for decades used Karen as a totem for coming to understand themselves and their identities in a world that tries to shove people into harmful and hurtful binaries.
Moreover, I found Tongson’s approach to exploring Karen’s backstory refreshing. She refused to indulge in an armchair exploration of Karen’s psychology and motivations – much less the anorexia nervosa that led to her death in 1983. The reader is presented with the facts of Karen’s life, minus any judgments, accusations, or wild speculation.
In what proves to be the driving thesis of the book, Tongson lets Karen be Karen.
The writing focuses sharp attention on who Karen was, what Karen wanted, and what Karen didn’t get. She lets Karen speak for Karen by adding in copious direct quotes from articles written during her career.
To be clear, there’s a lot that Karen doesn’t say. As an example, when asked directly about her feelings when she stepped out from behind her drum set to embrace being the face of The Carpenters, Karen mostly demurred. She instead mentioned that, while she would miss playing the drums, she wanted to do what was right for the group. Tongson makes regular references to the “Lead Sister” t-shirt that Karen was known to wear starting in 1974. That shirt – in essence – is how Karen saw herself in The Carpenters, and it’s how she lived her life.
Tongson does her due diligence by diving into the many biographies and films that explored the inner workings of The Carpenters as an act and as a family. The leading theory behind Karen’s early death at the age of 32 places much of the attention upon her mother, Agnes Carpenter. According to the stories and anecdotal evidence, she focused all of her attention on Richard’s talents and abilities, encouraging the rest of the family to follow suit, especially Karen.
Hence, from a young age, Karen rolled up her identity into her brothers because that’s the only model she’d known. And when she left the drums to only sing, it was because Richard and the band’s management wanted her to be the visual focal point for the band’s live shows. It’s easy to then diagnose that her anorexia nervosa developed from her need to be physically perfect so she reflected better upon her brother’s life’s work.
Tongson’s strength as a writer for this book lies in how she does talk about these things without diminishing who Karen was.
By taking an Occam’s Razor approach that refuses to blame anyone for what happened, she allows herself (and the dear reader) to more fully regard Karen’s talents, abilities, and personality. The book then becomes as a celebration of a life that yes, was tragically cut short, but was also filled to overflowing with music.
Because Karen – by all accounts – was simply a delightful person with a stirring passion for life. She loved music, she loved drumming, and she loved her brother. In essence, if being the “Lead Sister” in The Carpenters did fulfill Karen, maybe historians shouldn’t try to worry about what happened and instead just enjoy the songs.
Sure, it’s easy to want more for someone you feel got the short end of the stick. Just look at how people treated the disco-infused solo project Karen recorded in 1979 when her brother went to treatment for his Quaaludes addiction. Richard Carpenter and Herb Alpert both thought the album would only hurt The Carpenters’ image, paying no mind to how it was the music Karen wanted to make on her terms.
Karen Tongson takes the correct approach throughout the book, which is to celebrate Karen Carpenter and talk about all the people, nationalities, and cultures who have cherished her work for almost 50 years now.
By focusing on Karen’s life and legacy holistically, we have space to appreciate her and her catalog anew, all without either obsequious sugar-coating or grimy warts-and-all exposes.
Because Karen Carpenter matters:
- She was talented.
- She was an “It Girl” who didn’t fit the usual mold.
- She valued people and artistic expression.
- She and her brother created music of worth and merit, and she was the face of that music.
- She made music people loved.
- She deserved more.
