The Scottish actor/singer Euan Morton, perhaps best known for playing Boy George in Taboo, says he's a KC fan. Here's the pertinent part:
TJ: In the review, they mention Karen Carpenter. You obviously have a love of her.
MORTON: Some people love Pink Floyd, some people love other performers. I happen to love Karen Carpenter.
TJ: She really had an effect on your life?
MORTON: You know, I was very young and my mother had gone through a divorce and I think she was kind of depressed about the whole thing. So she would listen to the Carpenters and Joni Mitchell. Therefore, vicariously, so would I. In retrospect, in thinking about Karen's voice and her brother, Richard's arrangements were thought of then as kind of cheesy. I mean it was a time of the Vietnam War and people were marching for causes and then they had songs with lyrics like, 'why do birds suddenly appear'. The only person who loved the Carpenters was the President and everyone hated the President. They really did appear at the wrong and the right time.
I mean when you listen to Richard's arrangements and Karen's voice singing, 'I'll say goodbye to love. No one ever cared if I should live or die.' For me as a kid, my dad had just gone, and I wanted to be depressed. But Karen was also technically perfect. Even just to listen to her voice, I knew there was something miraculous going on in there. It was not just about connecting to a song emotionally, which she did, but technical performance, which you don't hear a lot of these days. Madonna's wonderful, but she's not technically brilliant. Christina Aguilera is amazing but her technique is to find a note and slide around to five hundred others. It's a very different style of singing. Karen was basic, honest and perfect. And I wanted to be like that. I wanted to be basic and honest. I just wanted to do to people what Karen Carpenter did to me. And I think that's what made me love her. I want to do that and make people feel the way she made me feel. Listen to me, I sound like Mother Teresa.
http://broadwayworld.com/article/Euan_Morton_Live_at_The_Algonquin_20080317
TJ: In the review, they mention Karen Carpenter. You obviously have a love of her.
MORTON: Some people love Pink Floyd, some people love other performers. I happen to love Karen Carpenter.
TJ: She really had an effect on your life?
MORTON: You know, I was very young and my mother had gone through a divorce and I think she was kind of depressed about the whole thing. So she would listen to the Carpenters and Joni Mitchell. Therefore, vicariously, so would I. In retrospect, in thinking about Karen's voice and her brother, Richard's arrangements were thought of then as kind of cheesy. I mean it was a time of the Vietnam War and people were marching for causes and then they had songs with lyrics like, 'why do birds suddenly appear'. The only person who loved the Carpenters was the President and everyone hated the President. They really did appear at the wrong and the right time.
I mean when you listen to Richard's arrangements and Karen's voice singing, 'I'll say goodbye to love. No one ever cared if I should live or die.' For me as a kid, my dad had just gone, and I wanted to be depressed. But Karen was also technically perfect. Even just to listen to her voice, I knew there was something miraculous going on in there. It was not just about connecting to a song emotionally, which she did, but technical performance, which you don't hear a lot of these days. Madonna's wonderful, but she's not technically brilliant. Christina Aguilera is amazing but her technique is to find a note and slide around to five hundred others. It's a very different style of singing. Karen was basic, honest and perfect. And I wanted to be like that. I wanted to be basic and honest. I just wanted to do to people what Karen Carpenter did to me. And I think that's what made me love her. I want to do that and make people feel the way she made me feel. Listen to me, I sound like Mother Teresa.
http://broadwayworld.com/article/Euan_Morton_Live_at_The_Algonquin_20080317
