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"Ticket to Ride" -- arguably one of the Carpenters' best cover versions. It does justice to the Beatles, and at the same time, Richard took it and transformed it into a whole new song. I can't hear the original version anymore without hearing the french horn or that velvety voice. "I think it's todaaaaaaaay-ayyyyy..."
I do think the best Carpenters songs are the ones where you can clearly see that they've changed the song and Richard has altered the arrangements to suit the Karen's voice, instead of the other way around. "Close To You" being the ultimate example, but another being the RC Trio jazzy version of "Dancing in the Streets" which sounds like no other version of that song (which has been covered hundreds if not thousands of times) I've ever heard. I am actually disappointed Richard went back to the original arrangement (even the original arranger) for their 1978 version (from the TV special).
One of the problems I have with the AKOH album is that Richard has taken two songs "A Kind of Hush" and "Breaking Up is Hard to Do" (the former of which is not only the lead single released but gives its name to the entire album!) and does little to nothing to change them or make them better than the original hits. A wasted opportunity, in my opinion.
I would agree with this - generally the best 'covers' they recorded were those where they managed to bring something new to their interpretation or arrangement. Even in the 1971 Bacharach/David medley, they managed to come up with new twists on the brief snippets of 'Walk on By' and 'Do You Know the Way to San Jose?' The honorable exception to this is their version of 'Help!', which just doesn't work for me.
It's also true that not only were they recording too many oldies by 1976, but that they were being much less ambitious in their take on them and were generally sticking much closer to the original arrangements. Only occasionally by this stage, such as on 'Your Baby Doesn't Love You Anymore', did they manage to bring anything new to the table. In that respect these later oldies recordings present a double problem of being a slack creative choice and not inventive enough to distinguish them from the originals and to justify covering them in the first place.
"The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)" back in the 40's, and had even added a new first verse in 1970, a first verse that Karen sang and a number of people hear every year when they hear her sing "All through the year we've waited!"
That was not quite an added verse, but placed there by Mel Torme in the tradition of the way things were in prior decades. It was somewhat commonplace back in the thirties and forties for a song to be composed with an intro, a short musical segment that serves to precede the main song, almost like an overture to set the stage. "The Christmas Song" is one of those, and so is "White Christmas". That section of "The sun is shining, the grass is green, the orange and palm trees sway..." is actually part of the song that tends not to be sung by most who do it. Richard had the good sense to rescue those intros from obscurity and have them performed as they should be.
Hands down. "Ticket To Ride". Karen's vocal reading on any of their versions is superb.
Don't tell anyone concerned, but I love the Carpenters version of this song even more than I like the Beatles' version. SSSSHHHHHH!!!!
Don't tell anyone concerned, but I love the Carpenters version of this song even more than I like the Beatles' version. SSSSHHHHHH!!!!