Rarest Carpenters Physical Single

tomswift2002

Well-Known Member
i was just thinking about what the rarest Carpenters singles are. Like what would be the Top 5 rarest singles in the world?

I’m thinking probably:

Druscilla Penny/Sometimes 45
“If I Had You/The Uninvited Guest” cassette single
“If I Had You/Lovelines” 45
Do You Hear What I Hear?/Little Altar Boy
Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft Canadian Stereo/Mono 45
 
Looking For Love/I’ll Be Yours. If you count Karen Carpenter. Only 500 made. They appear on From The Top and The Essential collection.

Carpenters wise, I would say If I Had You. I wouldn’t count it as a Karen single, because Richard touched it up. If both are involved it’s a carpenters song in my eyes, it even appeared on an official album.

Other then that Honolulu City Lights or Tryin to get the feeling again. I had Honolulu city lights until it got stolen a week ago.

Another would be “Happy” as the only copy I saw was a white promo with the same song on both sides in Mexico that my aunt had. Nobody else on this site has seen or heard of its existence.
 
‘If I Had You’ is very much a KAREN CARPENTER record. Richard remixed it, replaced the bass part and brought up the background vocals at the end. That doesn’t make it a Carpenters song in any way, though. It’s Karen all the way.

Noticed you’re in Chicago too. Cool
 
Did "If I Had You" get any kind of US AirPlay or was it just a promo single? To be honest, I've never cared that much for the song and don't quite get the huge love for it here - the arrangement is fine, but nothing exciting and Karen doesn't seem connected to any of it.
 
Did "If I Had You" get any kind of US AirPlay or was it just a promo single? To be honest, I've never cared that much for the song and don't quite get the huge love for it here - the arrangement is fine, but nothing exciting and Karen doesn't seem connected to any of it.
*Shocked face!*
She gives knock out vocals on this and the production is fabulous!
But opinions...opinions...

Plus it is said she was very excited about this track after she recorded it.
 
Did "If I Had You" get any kind of US AirPlay or was it just a promo single?

It peaked at #18 on the US Adult Contemporary chart (which is based only on airplay), so it definitely got some. I'm not sure how many weeks it charted, though. Since it was the first "new" Carpenters single in over 5 years and was released following the revived interest in the duo from the TV movie, it may have gotten a huge initial push and charted high, but then fell off the charts quickly. I don't know for sure though.
 
In their American releases, Your Baby Doesn’t Love You Anymore is the one I’m having the hardest time finding.
 
“Simple Melody” doesn’t really count as it was never released for broadcast or commercial sale. Just like that other 45 that only Richard has that was in the Mook wouldn’t count.

“Looking For Love/I’ll be Yours”. I totally forgot about. But, yeah 500 copies is very small. But still it would count as it was commercially released, albeit in small numbers.

“Honolulu City Lights” is hard to find, but compared to say the cassette version of “If I Had You” it seems to have had a higher print run. Of course I’ve never heard of a white label promo or CD promo for “Honolulu City Lights” so if those exist then there probably some of the rarest singles.

With “If I Had You”, at least for me, the “pink” Promo single-track CD seems to be the easiest version to find. I finally found the cassette version about a week and a half ago, but from what I’ve read here and elsewhere online, a lot of people were wondering if it was “vapourware” and the only copies were maybe production test copies. Again I’ve seen more copies of the mini-3-inch CD than the cassette version. And of course the 45 with “Lovelines” as the B-side was a Japanese only 45, and in that case it could be considered a “true” Karen solo single.
 
Did "If I Had You" get any kind of US AirPlay or was it just a promo single? To be honest, I've never cared that much for the song and don't quite get the huge love for it here - the arrangement is fine, but nothing exciting and Karen doesn't seem connected to any of it.

My mother said she requested it and it was played. She never heard it again after.
 
The 45 of "Canta" seems rather scarce.
Now, to be sure, there are many 45-single-copies with "Canta" printed on the label---
these are still the English-Language version....whereas,
I am unable to locate a copy which actually has Karen singing the Spanish lyric to "Sing."
 
The 45 of "Canta" seems rather scarce.
Now, to be sure, there are many 45-single-copies with "Canta" printed on the label---
these are still the English-Language version....whereas,
I am unable to locate a copy which actually has Karen singing the Spanish lyric to "Sing."

Yep. That's a tough one. The YouTube video with that single playing on that wonky turntable is here:



The sound is pretty bad and the turntable is running too slow. If you capture the audio and speed it up in Audacity to the correct speed, use a +4.160 percentage increase. It's then possible to edit out the two lines in Spanish and insert them into the better recording on FROM THE TOP. It still sounds horrible when those lines arrive, but it's better than the whole song being poor.
 
Yep. That's a tough one. The YouTube video with that single playing on that wonky turntable is here:



The sound is pretty bad and the turntable is running too slow. If you capture the audio and speed it up in Audacity to the correct speed, use a +4.160 percentage increase. It's then possible to edit out the two lines in Spanish and insert them into the better recording on FROM THE TOP. It still sounds horrible when those lines arrive, but it's better than the whole song being poor.

Ok I just listened to the video and realized that Richard never did issue the full Spanish version on “From The Top”. The FTT version is a hybrid of the Spanish and English versions. I wonder why he did that?
 
Ok I just listened to the video and realized that Richard never did issue the full Spanish version on “From The Top”. The FTT version is a hybrid of the Spanish and English versions. I wonder why he did that?

I didn’t even know there was a full Spanish version until I watched that YouTube video. I don’t know why he didn’t just release that as part of the box set instead of hybridising the two.
 
If I knew someone fluent in Spanish, I'd ask them to listen to that line. Perhaps it's bad pronunciation of a word.
 

The label is different on this one to the one posted above and doesn’t specify if the song is actually sung in Spanish. Sometimes Spanish territories translate the title of singles for the sleeve when it’s actually just the English language version on the recording. In the YouTube video above, the label actually specifies “Version en espanol” or “Spanish version”.
 
Correct. Many singles in Spanish-language countries will have the title "Canta", but the song is still the English version. From what I've been able to glean, the full Spanish version was issued in at least Mexico.
 
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