JohnFB
She was born to belong to the lines of a song...
On page 190 in speaking of Anne Murray's 1979 chart success with the beautiful "I Just Fall in Love Again" the authors state: "The divine Murray, as always, sings her heart out on that record, but the sparse production makes it sound like a demo compared with the Carpenter's version." And once again it's mentioned how Richard felt his arrangement was too long for radio and that he didn't know how to (or didn't want to) trim it so that it could be released as a single (thus clearing the way for Murray).
Now, there are several of us here (at least) who have always insisted that Richard's arrangement was an over-production (perhaps ideal for the album version) and that the record as released as a single would have been much better in a "sparser" setting, thus just naturally shortening up it's length, and much more importantly letting Karen's warm and romantic vocal shine through and dominate. As it stands her vocal seems to be buried under too many layers of orchestration, and even the technical treatment that Richard applied to her vocals on the RPO album didn't appear to help that much. Murray's version doesn't sound like a "demo" at all - it sounds exactly as it should - you can hear her every beautiful vocal nuance, and why she was "divine". Karen's would have been even more so.
Now, there are several of us here (at least) who have always insisted that Richard's arrangement was an over-production (perhaps ideal for the album version) and that the record as released as a single would have been much better in a "sparser" setting, thus just naturally shortening up it's length, and much more importantly letting Karen's warm and romantic vocal shine through and dominate. As it stands her vocal seems to be buried under too many layers of orchestration, and even the technical treatment that Richard applied to her vocals on the RPO album didn't appear to help that much. Murray's version doesn't sound like a "demo" at all - it sounds exactly as it should - you can hear her every beautiful vocal nuance, and why she was "divine". Karen's would have been even more so.