⭐ Official Review [Single]: 22. "ALL YOU GET FROM LOVE IS A LOVE SONG"/"I HAVE YOU" (1940-S)

Which side is your favorite?

  • Side A: "All You Get From Love Is A Love Song"

    Votes: 58 95.1%
  • Side B: "I Have You"

    Votes: 3 4.9%

  • Total voters
    61
The biggest comment I heard from friends was that it had voices added besides their own. I think people like their own overdubbing and actually their own songs better.

That’s an interesting observation. I’ve never thought of that but yeah, as great a song as it is, their signature vocal harmony sound is completely missing...from most of the album when I come to think of it:

B’Wana She No Home - Richard and Karen (oohs and aahs only)
All You Get From Love Is A Love Song - Karen, other backing singers, no Richard
I Just Fall In Love Again - choir
Don’t Cry For Me Argentina - choir
Sweet Sweet Smile - Richard and Karen
Two Sides - Karen only
Man Smart Woman Smarter - Karen only
Calling Occupants - Richard and Karen (mainly oohs and aahs)

Even on the tracks featuring them both, the sound is nowhere near what it was in their heyday. There’s little of the multilayered, stacked vocal sound we heard on the first four albums.
 
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That’s an interesting observation. I’ve never thought of that but yeah, as great a song as it is, their signature vocal harmony sound is completely missing...from most of the album when I come to think of it:

B’Wana She No Home - Richard and Karen (oohs and aahs only)
All You Get From Love Is A Love Song - Karen, other backing singers, no Richard
I Just Fall In Love Again - choir
Don’t Cry For Me Argentina - choir
Sweet Sweet Smile - Richard and Karen
Two Sides - Karen only
Man Smart Woman Smarter - Karen only
Calling Occupants - Richard and Karen (mainly oohs and aahs)

Even on the tracks featuring them both, the sound is nowhere near what it was in their heyday. There’s little of the multilayered, stacked vocal sound we heard on the first four albums.

Hey Stephen,

Richard's on AYGFLIALS and Smarter. He's low in the mix but he's there.

Best time to hear him is the final Ooohh during the sax solo on the former (you can here him "finishing off" the breathy ooohh)

laters

Neil
 
Hey Stephen,

Richard's on AYGFLIALS and Smarter. He's low in the mix but he's there.

Best time to hear him is the final Ooohh during the sax solo on the former (you can here him "finishing off" the breathy ooohh)

laters

Neil

Hey Neil - that sort of reiterates my point - if he’s there, then he’s virtually inaudible. Not at all like the sound of the early days.
 
Hey Neil - that sort of reiterates my point - if he’s there, then he’s virtually inaudible. Not at all like the sound of the early days.

Yeah, they were trying a different sound, weren't they. As Karen said in '78 they wanted to get back to the big vocal sound and that's evidenced in tracks like Slow Dance and I Believe You.
 
Yeah, they were trying a different sound, weren't they. As Karen said in '78 they wanted to get back to the big vocal sound and that's evidenced in tracks like Slow Dance and I Believe You.

I love Slow Dance. Karen sounds so young on the backing vocals, it's almost as though she styled her voice to suit the "young" feel of the lyrics that Richard had initial doubts over. They were still able to produce that signature sound even in 1978. I don't know why they ever abandoned it, because that's what made them instantly recognisable. The minute you take Karen's voice out of the stacked vocal sound, that sound goes out the window. Bjorn Ulvaeus once said the same about ABBA: no matter how good the arrangements, the songs, the production...the minute you take the girls' voices out and replace them with two other singers, that magic is lost, because their voices were the most important ingredient in that sound.
 
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^^Well, they may have been trying to return to that earlier vocal sound, but I feel--
and, felt in 1978--that I Believe You is NOT representative of that sound (i.e., arr. Paul Riser).
By 1981, toss in Made In America, and where are we ? Carpettes and Choral sound.

Thus, although Passage purposefully went in a different direction, that direction was not
as far askew as MIA went in 1981--so, for whatever reason, they chose NOT to return to that earlier vocal sound.
Close To You, Carpenters, A Song For You seem to be most representative of that earlier vocal sound (imho).
Actually, to my ears,
Passage is Offering minus Richard's leads ! That is, from a creative viewpoint.
 
Yeah, they seemed to drift further and further from their home-grown choral sound and never truly went back to it. The last studio album I hear the true Carpenter sound throughout on is Now And Then. It’s there in places on Horizon and then starts to really peter out.
 
^^Well, they may have been trying to return to that earlier vocal sound, but I feel--
and, felt in 1978--that I Believe You is NOT representative of that sound (i.e., arr. Paul Riser).
By 1981, toss in Made In America, and where are we ? Carpettes and Choral sound.

Thus, although Passage purposefully went in a different direction, that direction was not
as far askew as MIA went in 1981--so, for whatever reason, they chose NOT to return to that earlier vocal sound.
Close To You, Carpenters, A Song For You seem to be most representative of that earlier vocal sound (imho).
Actually, to my ears,
Passage is Offering minus Richard's leads ! That is, from a creative viewpoint.

Oh MIA has plenty of stacked vocals throughout. . . TGOD, Strength, WYBIMLA, WYGWIT, TMWWD, Beechwood.
 
Agree, there are "stacked vocals" on MIA, yet, still
Strength and Touch Me have additional singers on background duty.

Also, as contrast, I feel Beechwood and Postman --two similar songs--
highlight the real differences between how background (stacked) vocals were
utilized in 1974, and in 1981. I would argue that the difference was "real."
 
I mentioned this song in another thread as being my favorite Carpenters single. This is the one that got away. Radio should of played the h*** out of this. Their best radio friendly single since Only Yesterday. It's still has the melancholy overtones, but I love the instrumental track to this song, so uplifting! This song always makes me smile, I envision Karen singing this one as another [almost] biographical lyric, and she sings it so convincingly. I actually think this was their last "great" single, even though it's chart numbers weren't all that impressive. Oh well.

10/10
 
Here is a mean reviewer:
"CARPENTERS'
'All You Get From Love Is A Love Song' (ALM AMS 794),
The Crap 'n' Tears duo with a logical statement about affairs of the heart.
Featherlight fluffy and floating away, ++"
UK Record Mirror, May 29, 1977 (page 12).
 
I brought my 7" singles out this morning and I noticed I don't have a US picture sleeve for this single. Does it actually have one? Thanks for any responses. :)
 
I brought my 7" singles out this morning and I noticed I don't have a US picture sleeve for this single. Does it actually have one? Thanks for any responses. :)

yes, it follows a red, black and white color scheme; a black background, foreshadowing the album cover.
 
I bought mine before that picture sleeve was delivered with it. I missed that sleeve and the There’s A Kind Of Hush sleeve since I bought the singles on the first week of release. A month later, I saw them in the stores with sleeves. Not sure the exact reason but timing was the only rational choice I could come up with at the time.
 
I love the song, and the video too. Though I wonder if the title had something to do with its lack of chart sucesss: the whole title is a bit tricky to say, is not punchy, and cannot really be shortened.
 
Side A hands down on this one. It's a great little tune, and who doesn't love the video featuring Karen swaying side to side in her little hoodie while singing it? She looked good. The arrangement is definitely dated. It came out shortly after Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis's You Don't Have To Be A Star and shared a lot of the same elements of that particular arrangement. I have always wondered how much Richard was influenced by it. I also remember reading a review in which they are torn apart for seemingly trivializing the loss of love by calling it a "dirty old shame" so once again we have a situation where certain elements of a Carpenters tune were being nit picked, while no one could deny that even while K&R were struggling, their music remained top notch production and performance wise.

I Have You, although a finely recorded and performed tune, is one of the ones that just kinda bores me. The BV's in the chorus remind me of Andrews Sisters during the Your Hit Parade heyday. Maybe it was the departure from the traditional Carpenters vocal sound due to them not having the energy to do all of the recording anymore. I don't know, but this is definitely where it started to feel different, and as a single goes, it was not really representative of the Passage album that was to follow shortly thereafter. You hear this 45, both sides, then hear Passage, and it's just a different experience overall.
 
December 2018,
Steve Eaton
: "He recalls sitting on top of Scout Mountain with his guitar and writing songs.
His song, “All You Get From Love Is A Love Song,” was such a big hit for the Carpenters that
Eaton was able to build a new house up Buckskin Road, a home that he affectionately calls,
The house the Carpenters built.”
Eaton said that Karen Carpenter called him personally to tell him that she wanted to record his song.
“I never believed it was really her until she actually did the song. I thought it was a joke,” he said. "

Source:
www.idahostatejournal.com/news/local/well-known-musicians-to-perform-in-pocatello-dec/article_d796d000-ebc9-5604-a23f-f37f984662a2.html
 
Yeah, they seemed to drift further and further from their home-grown choral sound and never truly went back to it. The last studio album I hear the true Carpenter sound throughout on is Now And Then. It’s there in places on Horizon and then starts to really peter out.

Now and Then was the last one to really have a sense of baroque playfulness that they didn't feel forced to get an audience. In 1973 people were eating out of their palms; four years later and they are the ones in the vulnerable position of needing artistic (and for Karen, physical) nourishment. They would have had a better chance today of keeping up and finding more people to accept what they put out, If one could even imagine them existing as new today.

I do of course love the latter albums, it's just that it sounds different.
 
Another Single which has one of my favorite flip/B-sides:
I Have You.
Probably not an astute choice, as of May 1977, to have another Hush-LP cut here.
On the other hand, it probably did not matter at this point in time,
given that a fantastic single such as AYGFLIALS charted relatively poorly.
 
Another Single which has one of my favorite flip/B-sides:
I Have You.
Probably not an astute choice, as of May 1977, to have another Hush-LP cut here.
On the other hand, it probably did not matter at this point in time,
given that a fantastic single such as AYGFLIALS charted relatively poorly.
Also AYGFLIALS was the first single from “Passage”, so they really didn’t have much else to go with, although I see that in Japan “I Have You” was the B-Side to “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”, while ALYGFLIALS had “Eve” from all the way back on “Offering/Ticket To Ride” as it’s B-side (I guess they didn’t want 2 singles with the same B-side).
 
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