Karen's Solo Sessions - Rearranging and Reimagining

leadmister

Well-Known Member
About a year ago, I started delving more deeply into the solo sessions, starting with the solo album. I have to admit it wasn't always my cup of tea and I considered it to be a half-assed effort by Richard to just be like, "Meh. There it is. Now get off my back about it." Accepting that most decent albums have some sort of cohesive theme between tracks, I found the selections on the 1996 solo album release to be disjointed and a general mess. So I set about to evaluate other possible track orders and combinations.

What started with a single album imagining ended with a double album. I found that the 21 available tracks could be reasonably separated into 2 categories - Rock and Disco. I came up with a rough concept of Vol 1. being called Karen Carpenter YOLO (You Only Live Once) for the Rock album and Vol 2. being called Karen Carpenter DOLO (Disco Only Lives Once). It provides continuity of themes beginning with titles and ending with genres. I applied light remastering and cross faded a couple tracks into one, then burned them onto discs and lived with them in my car on the way to and from work for a few weeks. What I ended up with is an extremely viable and pleasing way to get all of those tracks out there should Richard decide to pull the trigger on that part of the catalog.

Anyway, here's what I came up with for track listings:

Karen Carpenter YOLO
1. Still In Love With You
2. Jimmy Mack
3. All Because Of You
4. Something's Missing (In My Life)
5. Making Love In The Afternoon
6. I Do It For Your Love
7. Truly You
8. Make Believe It's Your First Time
9. Still Crazy After All These Years
10. Last One Singin' The Blues

Karen Carpenter DOLO
1. Remember When Lovin' Took All Night
2. My Body Keeps Changing My Mind
3. Don't Try To Win Me Back Again
4. It's Really You
5. Guess I Just Lost My Head
6. If I Had You
7. If We Try
8. Lovelines
9. Keep My Lovelight Burning
10. Midnight/Love Making Love To You (Cross faded these to deal with the abrupt ending after Midnight and because I though they went together surprisingly well)

The album cover idea I came up with is a picture of Karen from those sessions that I rotoscoped, which is my profile avatar. With the tracks arranged into a double album, and with each half being themed appropriately, I found myself enjoying every one of these tracks from the solo sessions immensely, and I still play them from time to time. There is quite a bit of merit to many fans' claims that there was a lot of good material recorded at that time and if done right, it could have been a successful release. Needless to say, I am now a big fan of her solo work.
 
I'm pretty passionate about Karen's solo sessions too. I consider them a gift. They are a Carpenters by-product (Richard wasn't in any place to make new music) and it seems pretty obvious that Karen was. I know she's singing in a (mostly) higher register. Some of the songs may not be suited for her image wise. Maybe she didn't come off as sounding like Karen Carpenter of the Carpenters, but for me that was part of it's enjoyment. I wouldn't even mind if Richard re-imagined the whole session into a new deluxe edition. How about "dedicated to my sister and Phil Ramone!" -love, Richard.

I don't care if it would of been a hit or not in 1980, it was unfortunate that this could not find a home, other than the vaults until 1996. Maybe it's the dark horse/black sheep of the family, but it has it moments. In the world of Karen Carpenter those moments were cut short. She put a lot of time and effort into these 21 children, and they rightfully deserve to be a part of that legacy. :)
 
A lot of people tend to speculate about whether or not the solo album would be a hit because they want to justify not only the marketability potential of the album but also Karen's own taste and quality of work from an artistic standpoint. I can't blame her taste wise because Richard spent years keeping them on the fringes of popular music as part of his own artistic vision, while Karen here was trying to achieve something that went along with a current trend, disco. I guess that's why it took me a while to warm up to a lot of these tracks, because I generally just don't care for disco. But someone told me one day to just listen a few times and try to keep an open mind, and I started to get it. That's how the idea for this double album concept came to me.

There are some people who defend the solo album like it's one of their children, being almost crusaders for it, following people around online and arguing with them when they are critical of it whatsoever. I think that's going a bit far, but I have that level of passion for Karen's singing in general, and have been known to contradict people when they are discussing greatest female vocalists and Karen's name is never even mentioned. So I can understand the passion of people who treasure this solo work, believe me.

I just wish, with all that's been recorded, there was a way for the public to judge what is good and what isn't, rather than Richard always being the gatekeeper. I love Richard too but damn. lol.
 
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