JohnFB
She was born to belong to the lines of a song...
"Love Makin' Love To You" would have been too risque? You mean with lyrics like:...
Personally I quite enjoy Karen's performance on 'Love Makin' Love to You', although I think it would have been too 'risque' to have been included on the album in 1980 - she could perhaps have tackled it a couple of solo albums in if she'd wanted to, but it was probably a step too far for a debut solo album with the public image that she had going into it.
What I can say with certainty is that, in terms of quality, the album was most certainly releasable and there were clearly other factors at play in its shelving. And I will say that in hindsight, giving Karen the 'silent treatment' during the West Coast playback seems an incredibly cruel way to have dealt with the situation, regardless of whether they really believed it to be 'inferior' or not. I assume they didn't think through how such behavior would be received, but to me it seems they could hardly have picked a more devastating and damaging approach to have taken - particularly as they'd never done so before in relation to anything the Carpenters had released, even when they were aware it was below par.
Ain’t no lightning and thunder
Any seven wonder
Mightier than what you've got
What if you keep it up forever
No one does it better
Baby, need it while it's hot...
If only any of us could have heard them in person - either sung or spoken...
And as far as the album itself goes I place most of the blame for it's non-release on Karen herself - she had control over the song choices and ultimately approval of the arrangements and recording, including the vocal overlays - and she could have and should have insisted on it's release - all she had to do was assert herself and demand it - all they could do was bully her but she held the key and the power in her incomparable voice - she should have insisted in the strongest possible terms or threatened to take her immense talents somewhere else - just one more instance where she couldn't bring herself to be strong enough to act in her own best interest - there had been others before and there were more to come...if only she had been the hard-headed, stubborn, tempestuous diva she had every right to be...
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