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Rainy Days and Mondays - Brilliant performance, brilliant arrangement, brilliant production, brilliant matching of melody to lyrics... What else can you say? Well, Paul Gambaccini, of Rolling Stone magazine, steered clear of being as ecstatic, but at least he didn't bag the single outright in his 1971 mention, (Page 47, Rolling Stone, July 8th, 1971):- "The Carpenters are at, or near, the top of the chart of whatever Top 40 station is in your town. That sentence is appropriate every three months; the song that makes it ring true this June is "Rainy Days and Mondays", (A&M 1260). I refuse to knock the Carpenters. This is their fourth gold single, which is four more than I have. "Rainy Days and Mondays" is not the only duo-level easy-listening / teenybop 45 to assault our ears lately. Bobby Sherman sounds more nightclubby than ever on "The Drum", (Metromedia 217)"....(etc).
First time I've heard it implied that "Rainy Days and Mondays" is a teenybopper tune. Also, just thinking over his inference about the assault on the ears.....
That aside, the song is one of my favourites and I love the story Paul Williams told about his mother in Little Girl Blue. He'd coined the line "talkin' to myself and feeling old" from her and the day they first heard it on the radio in the car, she began to cry. When Paul said the lyric was inspired by her, she denied she ever talked to herself, exclaiming "you're crazy!". Very sweet story.
There's something that always bugged me about the way Carpenters did this song on TV and videos. They of course, most of the time, performed it to the original studio recording, which is fine. The part that bugs me is that almost universally when Karen sings "Hangin' around... (hangin' around...)" the camera seems to cut to one of the members of the band, sometimes Richard, lip-synching the backing "(hangin' around...)", which is clearly Karen's voice on the track. It always looks silly to me that guys are lip-synching that part.
It was clearly designed that way since Karen is holding the note from the first "around" while the overdubbed words come in behind her.