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Karen's Solo 'Singles' which would you have picked?

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I don't think any song on Karen's album would've succeeded as a single,but "If I Had You" would've been the strongest possibility.It's hard to believe that Karen wasted a whole year of precious time recording that album.Just think If Karen & Richard spent that whole year recording the "Music,Music,Music" soundtrack-can you imagine all the great tracks we would've had?

The best track on Karen's album is,without question, "If We Try"-but it wasn't quite top-40 material.Richard's remixes of "If I Had You" and "Lovelines" improved those tracks dramatically-and "Lovelines" sports an excellent fender rhodes solo.Richard picked the four best tracks from the album,remixed two, and included them on "Lovelines"-and that's all we really need from Karen's album.

A couple of the solo outtakes-"Love Making Love To You' and "Midnight" are actually better than most tracks on the album.
 
Wow, I disagree completely. "Make Believe It's Your First Time", "Still Crazy After All These Years" and "My Body Keeps Changing My Mind" are all top-notch songs and performances. I do agree with you that "Love Making Love To You" should have been included. It's a great song and a great arrangement.
 
If I had to narrow it down to two, I would say "Still Crazy" and the other would be one that unfortunately did NOT make it on the album however it was recorded - that being "Love Makin' Love To You". Probably my favorite recording from the whole twenty or so cuts produced for the project...
 
"Lovelines" blows. Probably my least favorite on the album. Reminds me of the Love Boat theme song.

By 1980, disco was dead (even if disco itself hadn't figured that out yet) and new wave was in. Only two songs that remotely had a chance at chart success were "Making Love in the Afternoon" and "If I Hsd You." That's it. Everyone knows it. Don't care what anyone else has to say about it (that's how sure I am about this). It finished.
 
I remember in the fall of 1996, when KAREN CARPENTER was released...and hearing MAKING LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON on the Winnipeg radio, a few times. I think MAKING LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON would have been a good hit...and especially a nice summer song. I don't think it would have gone #1 but maybe a Top 20 hit...IF I HAD YOU was a good song...although I cannot really see that being released...seems to be an overwhelming song with all the counter harmonies and overdubs as lovely as it was! LOVE MAKING LOVE TO YOU would have been another funky fun release, another Top 20 hit!
 
There's alot of strong opinions here about Karen's album-favorable & unfavorable.But,I can give everybody here a simply fact that speaks volumes about how people really feel about it:Karen's solo album was the bonafide worst selling(Carpenters) album ever-selling well under 100'000 copies in the US.Sales figures don't lie-and,sales figures aren't subject to individual opinion.

Karen's solo album got plenty of media/press attention,both before and during it's 1996 release.Everybody knew it was coming out.The fact that it sold less than 100,000 copies is a silent testimony to how most people feel about the album.Compare that with "Voice Of The Heart",which sold almost a million copies(900,000+) with no hit single.Isn't it obvious,people want Karen Carpenter-the torch singer,not Karen Carpenter-the disco/rock diva.

One good that came out of Karen's album were the photo sessions-some great pics of Karen,including the one that was ultimately used for the VOTH cover.
 
When Michael Jackson died, his catalog soared for weeks and weeks - but the release of his subsequent new material has not done especially well. "This Is It" was good, each successive release did a bit worse. IMHO, "Voice Of The Heart" did well not on the strength of the material but because of the great love people had for the Carpenters and the fact that it came out soon enough after her death. 16 years is an awfully long time for an album to sit on the shelf....after all the publicity, it's still more of a fan collectible than an album to compare to the rest of the catalog.
 
mr J. said:
There's alot of strong opinions here about Karen's album-favorable & unfavorable.But,I can give everybody here a simply fact that speaks volumes about how people really feel about it:Karen's solo album was the bonafide worst selling(Carpenters) album ever-selling well under 100'000 copies in the US.Sales figures don't lie-and,sales figures aren't subject to individual opinion.
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Well, let's see...it was released 15 yrs later than it should have, the music genre had completely changed by then and the artist wasn't even around to promote it....hmm could this have contributed to sales in 1996? I don't think it's fair to compare her album (of which was never suppose to be released) to the Carpenters work against sales.

I think the simple fact is that she wanted to release her album but she had no support from the inner circle to move it forward. Her album was ready to go back in 1980, photo shoot, album cover chosen, tracks were completed but the brakes were put on the album.

It reminds me a bit of Olivia in when she set out to release her album, Warm and Tender. She could not find a record label that would put out the material on this record. This album she recorded not only had a special meaning but meant a great deal to Olivia. It was Geffen Records that said yes we will release it. Olivia released it and I do not even think there was a top 10 hit, in fact I believe only 1 single made it to the top 30. Karen and Olivia were both very established artists at this time, even though Olivia's album did not break record sales for singles, I would bet she got more satisfaction out of the fact that her fan base was able to enjoy an album that meant so much to her. Could the same have been said for Karen?

We will never know how Karen's album would have been received by the public back in 1980, but my personal opinion is there was at least 1 if not 2 singles that she would have promoted. It's also likely she would have done a promotional tour of some sort, tv spots, possible mini concert tour.

There may be some that say this was "wasted" time Karen spent recording her solo album when she could have been recording Carpenters music. I tend to believe that the only part wasted was the time Karen should have got the proper help and healing she needed from knowledgable doctors to get herself back on track. Unfortunately she was not going to allow herself the time it was going to take to overcome this illness. She was attempting to complete 2 things during 1 visit to NY.
 
"Voice" came out just months after Karen's death and received a great deal of attention due to the recency of her passing. It also contained no tracks that had appeared on earlier LPs and was supported by several singles. Not only did Karen's solo record come out over a decade after her death, but half the tracks had also previously been released on several Carpenters compilations. If there was a single to support it, I'm not aware of one..."If I Had You" came out to support "Lovelines" in 1989.

For this to be a legitimate comparison, both "Voice" and "Karen Carpenter" would have had to be released simultaneously in 1983, perhaps with the two versions of "Make Believe It's Your First Time" being offered as a double-sided single and radio allowed to spin whichever one audiences preferred.

My guess is that yes, most people DO prefer Karen's work with Carpenters. But I don't agree that the sales of her solo album, when it was finally released, reflects anything more than a general waning of interest in Carpenters after the resurgences that came after her death and again after the TV movie.
 
There's enough quality moments on the record for me to wistfully wonder what would have been the reaction had it come out and how it would have it would have affected the future of the duo - fascinating question. And completely unanswerable!
 
mr J. said:
There's alot of strong opinions here about Karen's album-favorable & unfavorable.But,I can give everybody here a simply fact that speaks volumes about how people really feel about it:Karen's solo album was the bonafide worst selling(Carpenters) album ever-selling well under 100'000 copies in the US.Sales figures don't lie-and,sales figures aren't subject to individual opinion.
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It's completely unfair to quote the sales of a Karen Carpenter album released in 1996...this is a project that was meant to see the light of day in 1980. No one bought the album in 1996 because, frankly A&M didn't care for it and Richard still doesn't like it, the only reason he released it was because he was sick of the fans hounding him for it. So it got zero promotion from the label, and zero promotion from her brother. So for me, the sales figures are irrelevant, because no one outside of her hardcore base knows the album even exists.
 
TOOLMAN-I'm sorry to dissapoint you,but the poor sales of Karen's album was not due to a "general waning of interest in Carpenters music",as you stated."Love Songs" came out 18 months after Karen's album was released and it sold an amazing 500,000 copies within 5 months of release,and spent more than six months on the Billboard top 200 album charts.

Obviously,there was no "waning of interest" in K&R during the mid/late 1990's."Love Songs" is a stellar compilation-and people responded with enthusiasm!

I think it's hard for some fans to accept the plain fact that Karen's album just wasn't a good album.Yes-there were a few decent/interesting tracks on it,but Karen Carpenter and Rock aren't a good mix.
 
Karen's solo album Rock? It was more POP music or female POP music. There you go again comparing her album against sales to the Carpenters and classifying her music to a certain type. I don't know why we want to tear down the only solo album she put out that we were not suppose to even hear in the first place.

Sales would have been very important had the album been released when Karen was alive to promote it but 16 yrs later do sales really matter??
 
mr J. said:
TOOLMAN-I'm sorry to dissapoint you,but the poor sales of Karen's album was not due to a "general waning of interest in Carpenters music",as you stated."Love Songs" came out 18 months after Karen's album was released and it sold an amazing 500,000 copies within 5 months of release,and spent more than six months on the Billboard top 200 album charts.
Obviously,there was no "waning of interest" in K&R during the mid/late 1990's."Love Songs" is a stellar compilation-and people responded with enthusiasm!
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Respectfully, I must disagree. A lot of people who remember Carpenters hits may not be big time music aficionados as we are. A new compilation of once familiar hits can easily be sold to that 0ccasional consumer who would otherwise pass on an album of unknown material. Thus the reason why "Love Songs" would easily top the sales of Karen's solo album.
 
toeknee4bz said:
Respectfully, I must disagree. A lot of people who remember Carpenters hits may not be big time music aficionados as we are. A new compilation of once familiar hits can easily be sold to that 0ccasional consumer who would otherwise pass on an album of unknown material. Thus the reason why "Love Songs" would easily top the sales of Karen's solo album.
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You took the words right out of my mouth! Actually if I can throw my $.02 in, the album from a commercial standpoint really wasn't strong. I honestly feel that if Karen were alive today we probably wouldn't even be having this conversation.
 
CHRIS(AN ORDINARY FOOL)-Several tunes on Karen's solo were light-rock oriented tracks:"Still In Love With You","Making Love In The Afternoon","All Because Of You","Still Crazy After All These Years".It's a pop album-but "pop" is a broad term-and it can encompass several different styles.Karen and phil were aiming for a light rock/disco type of sound.

As far as the question of wether sales matter at this point-no,they don't.But,we can have a more focused conversation when we're talking about facts instead of just expressing opinions back and forth.As I said earlier,there's alot of strong opinions being voiced here-both favorable & unfavorable.I'm not against the album-I just feel the same way most K&R fans feel about it-they don't particularly care for the album.(and this feeling is reflected in the sales figures,like it or not)

I also want to reiterate that everybody knew the album was coming out in October 1996:fans,non-fans,music-industry people.There were press write-ups and reviews in several magazines and almost every major newspaper in the country.(I remember the writeup in New York Newsday a couple of days before the release date).Nobody can say they didn't buy the album because they didn't know about it-record buyers make it their business to know about these things.(For record buyers like myself,checking out Tower Records-or Record World- once a month was mandatory!)
 
Back here in Singapore, we did not receive any news about the album being released, in 1996. I remember being at a CD store looking for something else, and I had such a shock when I saw a light green 'spine' with the words Karen Carpenter printed on it. It was such a great surprise! My only disappointment (if I could use that word) was that I had already heard 6 of the songs (from Lovelines + From The Top), so I knew that when I went home to listen to it, it would only be about 5 totally new songs that I had never heard before (I actually thought 'Make Believe' was the same version as the one on VOTH). While I enjoyed the album as a whole, I felt it lacked 'oomph!'...the songs sounded pleasant but as Richard himself had alluded too, she sang at a much higher range, and that made the songs less compelling. She also sounded a bit unnatural for Still In Love with You (though I really like that song). When I thought how it would fare if it was released in 1980, I felt that only If I Had You, If We Try and My Body...would be hits, in Singapore because that were the kinds of songs popular on the radio at that time...(BTW the last time any Carpenters songs charted on Singapore radio was 1978 when Sweet Sweet Smile and All you Get... were number 1 and 2, respectively :) - based on radio play/requests).
 
I don't know what the source is for the supposed sales of Karen Carpenter (aside from certifications, which are probably out of date for some of their albums, most sales information is presumably anecdotal), but its sales in 1996 isn't really much of an indication of how it might have sold in 1980. I can't speak for the US but in the UK it was treated (as is the case for the majority of unreleased material by anyone other than aan act like The Beatles) as a ' back catalogue' issue rather than a 'new album' (the same was true of Lovelines, which only ended up charting a few months after its release after the Karen Carpenter Story was shown in TV). Record stores held one or two copies in the A-Z section, not in the new releases section, and although I recall a couple of reviews in the newspapers on it, if you didn't already know it was being released, you'd never know it was out. Contrast this with the release of the Love Songs compliation a couple of years later, which was prominently displayed in stores and advertised on TV and in the press. Obviously it was always going have more sales potential as it contained tracks that were more familiar to the public, but the way it was marketed was entirely different from how the Karen Carpenter album had been handled (or not), and I know Love Songs got quite a promotional push in the US as well, so I imagine the situation was similar there. As far as I'm aware, Richard (who has normally done a bit of promotion for a new compilation) didn't do any for the solo album - true, it wasn't his album, but still...

It is nice to see a lot of support for the project on here - contrary to Mr J's assertion that most fans don't care for the album, the general consensus from these pages seems largely positive. For many years there was only the narrative imposed on the project by Richard and A&M and put forward in Ray Coleman's book that it wasn't any good, that it didn't contain any hits, etc, etc, which never made sense to me after hearing the tracks that appeared on Lovelines and From the Top. Image issues aside, the better tracks like If I Had You would have had more chart potential than most of the Carpenters' late 70s and early 80s singles.

I'm not going to claim that the solo album would have been a smash had it been put out in 1980. It wouldn't necessarily have been easy to market - you can imagine that the racier subject matter of some of the songs would have met with some jibes and derision - and Karen herself was hardly in great shape to be promoting it at the time either. However, even if some of its experiments don't all work, it certainly sounds much more 'contemporary' than what ended up on Made in America. Of course, we'll never know how it could have turned out, but the solo album should have been given a chance to succeed or fail at the time - after all, Made in America, which was less adventurous and commercial, was given an enthusiastic shot and didn't really deliver the goods.
 
I recall knowing about the KC solo album before it came out, and heading to the local Sam Goody record store on release day to get it. What I don't recall is where it was within the store. I likely walked in, asked a clerk, and then paid for it and went out to the car to listen to it. Working in radio, I likely saw a blurb in Billboard or another publication in a chance viewing. I don't remember any commercials on TV or news items about it. And I remember thinking that I too had already heard literally half of the album prior to its release.

LOVE SONGS was a different matter. It had been released in the UK a whole year prior to its release in the US, and I knew nothing about it for most of that year. It wasn't until checking into the A&M Corner Clinic for Obsessive Collectors in 1997 for the first time, that I learned of the existence of LOVE SONGS. I remember finding out, maybe from Steve S., that it was scheduled for release here and I decided not to order an import copy from Thoughtscape Sounds, one of our early sources of import CDs. But I also don't recall much in the way of advertising for that one either. Maybe I just wasn't watching the right programs in 1996-7.

Harry
 
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