⭐ Official Review [Single]: 21. "GOOFUS"/"BOAT TO SAIL" (1859-S)

Which side is your favorite?

  • Side A: "Goofus"

    Votes: 15 32.6%
  • Side B: "Boat To Sail"

    Votes: 31 67.4%

  • Total voters
    46
I love Goofus....in my opinion it's no worse than Muskrat Love (in terms of song choices or singles) look at the songs that were playing then on the radio...a lot of slow ballads.


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Oh, I do like the flip side:
Boat to Sail.
Can't help but note that the two "sail" songs,
Boat to Sail and Sailing on the Tide, are rarely anthologized on other compilations.
Talk about 360-turn, the more I listen to the Hush album,
the more I like it. Again, this is not due to any "hit-single-potential" but,
due to the overall feel, the flow, the artwork, the diversity of songs.
 
After some thought on this issue--the decision to release Goofus as a Single,
I have concluded that no one (A&M or Carpenters) seriously thought Goofus was going to be a "hit."
In 1979, during an interview, the duo expresses dismay only that Only Yesterday (#4) had sold
600,000 copies--that was the one single they singled-out as being disappointing.
That Solitaire reached #17 (selling maybe 200,000 copies), Hush #12, I Need To Be In Love #35,
implies that each of those other singles sold quite a bit less than 200,000 copies (each), at that juncture.
So, Goofus, at #54 would have been lucky to sell in the tens-of-thousands.
Uncool, or not, I never gave that issue ('coolness') much thought.
But, it is a BRILLIANT rendition (vocals, harmony, arrangement, diversity) by the duo (imho).
 
I like Goofus for its old timey, vaudeville-like arrangement and the harmonies but they were out of their damn minds releasing it for a single. Did the two of them and the label want to make commercial and image matters worse? It was professional masochism as far I'm concerned. This was really the beginning of the end of their big popularity and was likely the reason why a fresh, modern song like All You Get FLIALS didn't go far; by that point people had moved on to disco glitz and weren't interested in giving them another chance.

Their later 70s work has the same timelessness that is present in the former half of the decade (though 1970-1975 is where the real magic largely is) which makes it hold up today, but in that era it was seen as old hat. The lush, understated, low key sound that made them soar in the early 70s was quickly out of popular favor when the late flamboyant, over-the-top 70s and early 80s hit. It didn't help them commercially or culturally to not change with the times (they just couldn't do it), but it was built to last as one can hear today, whereas many of the of the other albums and singles that knocked them aside sound dated in 2019.
 
I remember those days, The Carpenters and waning popularity, throughout the 1970's.
I say this: their commercial popularity ended long before the decision to release Goofus.
I remember Please Mr.Postman being on the radio EVERYWHERE.
Then, I heard Only Yesterday sporadically (but, often) on the radio.
Never heard Solitaire at all on the radio (during 1975), A Kind Of Hush even less,
and, I Need To Be In Love exactly ONCE on radio (in 1976).
The real division began with Solitaire and snowballed with I Need To Be In Love.
So, whatever was happening had absolutely NOTHING to do with releasing Goofus as a single.
It might not have helped, but at that point in time, its release did not matter !
Just my two cents.


People Magazine (August 2nd,1976): "...dirty is in these days. Movie porn queen Andrea True moans an explicit piece of trash—More, More, More—and it becomes a gold record. She will almost certainly never have another one; yet Andrea is getting more, more, more attention than the Carpenters..."
 
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I remember those days, The Carpenters and waning popularity, throughout the 1970's.
I say this: their commercial popularity ended long before the decision to release Goofus.
I remember Please Mr.Postman being on the radio EVERYWHERE.
Then, I heard Only Yesterday sporadically (but, often) on the radio.
Never heard Solitaire at all on the radio (during 1975), A Kind Of Hush even less,
and, I Need To Be In Love exactly ONCE on radio (in 1976).
The real division began with Solitaire and snowballed with I Need To Be In Love.
So, whatever was happening had absolutely NOTHING to do with releasing Goofus as a single.
It might not have helped, but at that point in time, its release did not matter !
Just my two cents.

Right, Goofus was just the final straw/break that was building for some time. Releasing Solitaire was a big mistake as it's just not the right song for AirPlay at all. That it went to 17 is just proof that 1975 was still them at a peak, because how else could one explain solid radio/45 appeal for a very slow, very depressing ballad with no real hook? That, with coupled with INTBIL, slowed them down a lot and they should have gone with something upbeat, perhaps Happy?
 
After some thought on this issue--the decision to release Goofus as a Single, I have concluded that no one (A&M or Carpenters) seriously thought Goofus was going to be a "hit.".

Which makes its release as a single even more pointless. This was probably the worst error of judgement in their career.
 
So, Goofus, at #54 would have been lucky to sell in the tens-of-thousands.
Uncool, or not, I never gave that issue ('coolness') much thought.
But, it is a BRILLIANT rendition (vocals, harmony, arrangement, diversity) by the duo (imho).

The issue is that they HAD to be chart-minded. They had no room for self-indulgence - especially when it was as painfully uncool as this. Singles have to sell. If they don’t, you’re forgotten about. Further, singles can’t be this uncool. They were already having terrible image issues thanks to bad album covers (momentarily rectified with “Horizon”) and that choice of song wouldn’t have helped anything in that regard. If Pop radio stops playing you, forget it. By then, that’s essentially what happened. The chart action at the time for that album and every other one bear that out.

Ed
 
Perhaps after an image damaging song like "Sing" becomes a huge hit they thought that something else lightweight can pass. I love Sing and it's a much better song but it was a hit despite making them look juvenile. But in 1973 they could have released many things and it would have been popular. Pop music being as fickle as it is was vastly different three years later.
 
Perhaps after an image damaging song like "Sing" becomes a huge hit they thought that something else lightweight can pass. I love Sing and it's a much better song but it was a hit despite making them look juvenile. But in 1973 they could have released many things and it would have been popular. Pop music being as fickle as it is was vastly different three years later.

Forgot about “Sing”. I hate that I like it but I do. LOL! Still, uncool to its core and an epically bad idea. The kids choir coupled with Sesame Street song = total cool point decimation.

Ed
 
Pop music being as fickle as it is was vastly different three years later.

The way the record buying public can quickly turn away from a popular artist must be very disconcerting for music artists that are used to prolific chart success. ABBA had nine top 5 hits in the UK between 1979 and 1981, including two #1s. A year later their next - and last - three singles failed to crack the top 20. This pattern echoes the Carpenters decline from 1976 onwards. The difference is the Carpenters kept on relentlessly putting out singles that broadly charted lower and lower with each successive one. ABBA had the foresight to give it up while they had the chance and went out on a relative high with the release of The Singles: The First Ten Years.
 
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"Goofus" was on the HUSH album. They needed a single, so it got released as a "throw it up against the wall and see what sticks" kind of thing. They'd had hist with "Postman" and "Sing" - and as we see in another thread, "Jambalaya" was ripping up the charts in other territories, so why not?
 
"Goofus" was on the HUSH album. They needed a single, so it got released as a "throw it up against the wall and see what sticks" kind of thing.

Such an approach would smack of desperation to me. I can’t think that anyone in their right mind would consider Goofus good enough to be single material in the US at this point in their career.
 
So whose to say they weren't desperate?

I think by this point they probably were desperate for chart success but why wasn’t anyone advising them of the poor decision to release this as a single and then to put themselves through the rigmarole of mostly poor quality TV specials in the ensuing years? Was it Jerry Weintraub’s fault? Was it A&M’s for allowing them to be taken down that road? Or was it just their own? I’m not judging them, I’m just curious with the benefit of hindsight. I’d love to have a discussion with Richard about this whole period of their career and hear his thoughts.
 
I wonder how "Sing" would have turned out had their NOT been a children's choir on the track? It would have been cool if they had recorded 2 versions one with the children's choir and one with a more "top 40" type sound (meaning no choir and less Sesame Street feel to it)

I agree that Goofus was the wrong choice for a single but I still like the song as an album cut.
 
Call me crazy, but I also believe
Sing
is awesomely brilliant.
Children's choir--perfectly suited for this song.
I heard Sing everywhere !
 
Here is one view (excerpts):
Carpenters Were Never Cool
WRITTEN BY DW. DUNPHY• JUNE 1, 2018
"There was nothing hip about Karen and Richard, and that’s why they succeeded."
----
"If Carpenters were purposefully unhip, why did they do so well?
Why are they remembered so fondly, even as many of their adult-contemporary
peers have been lost to the slop of time ? "
----
"There is no modern equivalent to Carpenters and I don’t know how I feel about that."
----
Much more:
Dw. Dunphy On… Carpenters Were Never Cool

Another view:
"Considered lightweight and uncool in their time, The Carpenters' music has outlasted trends."
Here:
A Gentle Gear Shift: Direct Modulation in The Carpenters' "(They Long to Be) Close to You"

Another:
"The Carpenters were so rigorously uncool–and so deeply sincere in their uncoolness–that it’s in some sense profoundly exotic to the modern listener,
and therefore, kind of cool."
Much more:
hunkereddowninbrooklyn.wordpress.com/tag/the-carpenters/
 
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I wonder how "Sing" would have turned out had their NOT been a children's choir on the track? It would have been cool if they had recorded 2 versions one with the children's choir and one with a more "top 40" type sound (meaning no choir and less Sesame Street feel to it)

I don't know how you do what Richard did without them. I mean...do you hear how the "La la la"'s play off of Richard and Karen killing it while Karen is singing "last your whole life long"? A big part of that blend is the kids. They're all the top voices. Richard just used them in the stack. That's what makes Richard so maddening. He can take bad ideas and still make highly listenable moments within them.

I HATE him for that...LOL!!

Ed
 
I don't know how you do what Richard did without them. I mean...do you hear how the "La la la"'s play off of Richard and Karen killing it while Karen is singing "last your whole life long"? A big part of that blend is the kids. They're all the top voices. Richard just used them in the stack. That's what makes Richard so maddening. He can take bad ideas and still make highly listenable moments within them.

I HATE him for that...LOL!!

Ed

I know exactly what you mean. Richard takes disparate parts that wouldn't work together with a less genius arranger and makes the damn thing work. The blend of Karen's lead with those children's voice sounds euphoric. And despite this, and this has been mentioned here before, Karen's vocal is chilling. Her voice on its own was a singular instrument of unmatched warmth and melancholy, and that combination of feeling is realized profoundly yet again on Sing. Only she could undermine a sticky sweet song with a glimpse of hope yet mostly with a darker realization that the narrator has yet to find a song to sing that makes her feel whole. She was a genius and likely never knew it.
 
Karen's vocal is chilling. Her voice on its own was a singular instrument of unmatched warmth and melancholy, and that combination of feeling is realized profoundly yet again on Sing.

I know many people consider Horizon their collective peak, but I still maintain that her voice was at its richest, purest and best in 1973. The resonance is better than in any other year and this is best heard on tracks like Our Day Will Come and One Fine Day. It’s also very prevalent on the track we’re all discussing, Sing.
 
I think by this point they probably were desperate for chart success but why wasn’t anyone advising them of the poor decision to release this as a single and then to put themselves through the rigmarole of mostly poor quality TV specials in the ensuing years? Was it Jerry Weintraub’s fault? Was it A&M’s for allowing them to be taken down that road? Or was it just their own? I’m not judging them, I’m just curious with the benefit of hindsight. I’d love to have a discussion with Richard about this whole period of their career and hear his thoughts.

I think that's a fair point. Hindsight may be 20/20 vision, but it should have been obvious to them and their record company/management that cheesy TV specials and superficial novelty singles like 'Goofus' were going to do nothnig for their career - and most certainly not for their image. I suspect it was a combination of all three of them being responsible. Jerry Weintraub was a big-name manager but was more of a showbiz type who was likely to steer them in the direction of TV specials and stints at Vegas than at pushing themselves creatively. A&M should have gotten more involved when it was clear that the quality of their output wasn't what it could be and had been (see my point (2) on 'Goofus' below).

Perhaps despite all their complaints about the image problem, Richard and Karen genuinely didn't understand how to combat it, as even if they weren't 'goody-fourshoes', they weren't exactly counter-cultural either. An article posted in the Now & Then thread from 1973 quoted Richard as saying 'we do restrict the songs we sing so that there's no real contradiction of the public's concept of us', so in a sense they were to some extent complicit in perpetuating the problem.

Back to 'Goofus', three things strike me having read all the recent posts on it above:

1) It was a disastrous choice of single both on a commerical and a creative level. Even if it had been a hit (I think they gambled totally wrong on this one as I don't think it was ever likely to catch on, given their fading fortunes on the charts, and I suspect that even had it been released in their hit-making heyday, it still wouldn't have been a major hit), where would they have gone from there? Artistically it was a complete cul-de-sac.

2) The fact that it was even considered as a single highlights the weakness of the A Kind of Hush album and the lack of potential singles on there. Really A&M should have been more forceful than just Herb Alpert implying to Richard that it wasn't as good as their usual output and should have sent them back to come up with some better material - or at least replacing some of the tracks with songs that had more chart potential. This wasn't a creative triumph/commerical bomb type of album, it was more of a 'sleepwalking over the cliff' affair. Perhaps Richard and Karen would have really benefited from a bit more creative tough love at this stage.

3) Whilst it's possible that the failure of 'Goofus' on the charts meant that much of the audience may never have heard it and thus its negative impact on their image may have been somewhat overstated, the same can't be said of radio programmers, who would have been sent the single and thus would have probably played it (and doubtless binned it straight away thereafter). This final 'poisioning of the well' with radio (to no chart benefit) would certainly help explain the resistance that 'All You Get From Love is a Love Song', a much more commerical single, then faced only a few months later.
 
This wasn't a creative triumph/commerical bomb type of album, it was more of a 'sleepwalking over the cliff' affair. .

Using that analogy, they woke up with a jolt just in time in 1977 with the creative burst of energy that produced Passage, but then promptly fell asleep again and went over the cliff edge with 1981's Made In America.
 
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