⭐ Official Review [Single]: 3. "WE'VE ONLY JUST BEGUN"/"ALL OF MY LIFE" (1217)

Which side is your favorite?

  • Side A: "WE'VE ONLY JUST BEGUN"

    Votes: 48 85.7%
  • Side B: "ALL OF MY LIFE"

    Votes: 8 14.3%

  • Total voters
    56
For some unknown reason I had to see this video today;


What a great live performance by our beloved Karen. To see her little dance is good for the soul! I especially love the way she stylizes the lyric "comes" at 2:14. Those little nuances... 21 yr old mega-talent!:love:


Perfect in every way!!!
 
ALL OF MY LIFE has been a favorite album cut since I purchased my first CLOSE TO YOU album. WE'VE ONLY JUST BEGUN has been my personal anthem for almost 50 years! Karen's vocal performance, Richard's arrangement and the music and lyrics and music of Williams & Nichols are the formula of perfection. I listen to this song every day. It fills my soul, warms my heart and allows me to power through my life. I am grateful.
 
^^ It was a hard choice, I love both songs. You might or might not be aware of this great live performance of All Of My Life from "Your Navy Presents". The song begins at 10:23;

 
ALL OF MY LIFE has been a favorite album cut since I purchased my first CLOSE TO YOU album. WE'VE ONLY JUST BEGUN has been my personal anthem for almost 50 years! Karen's vocal performance, Richard's arrangement and the music and lyrics and music of Williams & Nichols are the formula of perfection. I listen to this song every day. It fills my soul, warms my heart and allows me to power through my life. I am grateful.

WOJB is one of their "perfect" songs. Magical. It is on every collection I have ever made of Carpenters songs, along with Rainy Days and Mondays. And not surprisingly, the same creative formula on Rainy Days.
 
Perfect in every way!!!

That is a terrific performance - all the live segments from their 1971 BBC show were great, in fact. I love the way she harmonises with the band instead of singing 'before the rising sun' - it just makes the version even more special.
 
^^ Interesting! I checked up on who Freddie Allen was and his version of the song was the first to be released, but the first to be recorded was the Paul Williams version. You can hear it here:

Original versions of We've Only Just Begun by Freddie Allen | SecondHandSongs

What’s fascinating about the Williams version is the ending, where the keyboard plays the closing notes that Richard emulated and transposed into a different key for the scene in the TV movie where it switches from their living room to recording the song in the studio. Seamless.
 
Hear Ariel Pink and Bonnie “Prince” Billy Cover the Carpenters for a Rejected Advertising Campaign
Rob Arcand // August 4, 2019
In 2018, the advertising geniuses at Snake Accident commissioned TV On The Radio to record their own version of the
1970s Carpenters hit “We’ve Only Just Begun” for a commercial for the asset management company Nuveen.
Earlier in the campaign, the group apparently reached out to a variety of artists including Ariel Pink and Bonnie “Prince” Billy,
who each recorded their own take on the Carpenters classic. Now, the advertising group has made the rejected covers publicly
available on SoundCloud, as Stereogum points out. For his rendition, Ariel Pink stayed fairly true to the original, using twinkling synths and retro drum machines to play up the sincerity of his rendition. Will Oldham took things even further, with thin acoustic guitars and multi-tracked vocals that become a dead match for the ’70s song. Eventually, Oldham’s rendition erupts into a noisy ruckus with strings and electric guitars to rival some of his strongest Palace Music recordings."

Scroll down and hear them here:
Ariel Pink and Bonnie "Prince" Billy Cover the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun": Listen
 
Haven't been on his YouTube channel since last year and I missed this little Christmas present. I was so preoccupied with the RPO album.
You could say this strips it down to the essential ingredient, Karen. :wink:



Yes this is amazing, there are a couple of versions of this, if memory serves. And now, for an astonishingly new observation: what a beautiful, supremely talented woman Karen Carpenter was.
 
Yes this is amazing, there are a couple of versions of this, if memory serves. And now, for an astonishingly new observation: what a beautiful, supremely talented woman Karen Carpenter was.

Amen!! When I heard that she played electric bass on two of the tracks on the "Offering" album, it just solidified by admiration for her.
 
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"We've Only Just Begun" by Carpenters has been certified silver in the UK for 200,000 units. This follows the song being covered in a bank advert (a homage to the song being used in a US bank commercial exactly 50 years ago) leading to the Carpenters version getting renewed interest and charting on the streaming/digital charts. This is the Carpenters 28th title to receive an official certification from Britain.
 
"We've Only Just Begun" by Carpenters has been certified silver in the UK for 200,000 units. This follows the song being covered in a bank advert (a homage to the song being used in a US bank commercial exactly 50 years ago) leading to the Carpenters version getting renewed interest and charting on the streaming/digital charts. This is the Carpenters 28th title to receive an official certification from Britain.
What loyal fans the duo has had in the UK and Japan throughout the years. Ironic; a Paul Williams vocal on a bank commerical in 1970, gave rise to the classic version of by the duo, then we have this 2020 Lloyds Bank version by Bats For Lashes, and we then see an up tick in downloads in the definitive Carpenters version. Convinces me further that their music will always be played...
 
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Wow, the more I listen to We've Only Just Begun,
the more I love it !
Absolutely a masterpiece of arranging, lead and background vocals.
As I have oft repeated, this is an instance---for me--where everything fits.
Cynical as I am prone to be--this is a song which never ceases to amaze me.
...
Yes, that says it for me too - not only one of the Carpenter's best, but one of the very best pop/rock songs ever, a wonderful musical conception that's always a joy to hear...

It sounds just as good today as it did 50 years ago when I first heard it - that was in my car on my way to work in a traffic jam - I can even picture the intersection where I was stalled, and cranking up the volume on the radio and saying something like "Who the **** is that!? (referring mostly to the female singer with the gorgeous voice).That voice hadn't really stood out so much on "Close to You".

As I said recently (Top Album Rating thread) it's impossible not to love this song and its the first one I'd play to initiate a newbie.

As I also said on that thread "All of My life" is a really nice song that I like almost as much as "Don't Be Afraid" on the "Offering" album, but not in the same elevated class as WOJB (but then only a few songs that came after ever were either).
 
I also wanted to say that WOJB is the only song that Karen double-tracks her lead vocal on that I will never complain about - I'll give her a pass on this one because it's just too incredibly good of a recording to ever say anything negative about it...
 
I also wanted to say that WOJB is the only song that Karen double-tracks her lead vocal on that I will never complain about - I'll give her a pass on this one because it's just too incredibly good of a recording to ever say anything negative about it...

Listen to this, it brings back just her singular voice to parts of the song and you can really hear the emotion she puts into the words that get lost in Richard’s overdubs. Further fleshes out the feeling we hear her convey in the official version:

 
Listen to this, it brings back just her singular voice to parts of the song and you can really hear the emotion she puts into the words that get lost in Richard’s overdubs. Further fleshes out the feeling we hear her convey in the official version:


I believe I like this version better than the original. "Intimate" is the operative word here. Tears well-up when I see a beautiful, young, and healthy Karen on the video and total gooseflesh on the audio. Thanks for posting!
 
Listen to this, it brings back just her singular voice to parts of the song and you can really hear the emotion she puts into the words that get lost in Richard’s overdubs. Further fleshes out the feeling we hear her convey in the official version:



The original version is pretty much spot-on already in my opinion, but it is a treat to hear some of Karen's vocals more clearly in this version. That 'so much of life ahead' line at the end is both gorgeous and slightly heartbreaking when heard in isolation like this.
 
Listen to this, it brings back just her singular voice to parts of the song and you can really hear the emotion she puts into the words that get lost in Richard’s overdubs. Further fleshes out the feeling we hear her convey in the official version:


Thanks so much for this - this is really lovely - it's always great to hear Karen's unadulterated natural voice - hearing it here on the chorus where it was double-tracked (at least) on the original is a joy -

The only difference is this: there was in the original a beautiful, attention-grabbing, goosebump-raising contrast between the end of the chorus and the beginning of the 3rd verse - the double-tracked chorus ends, the volume softens and the tempo slows, and Karen's pure, gorgeous, natural voice starts the 3rd verse with "And when the evening comes..." - this was always such a beautiful moment in the recording (a stroke of arranging genius on Richard's part) - now, on this version, that contrast has slightly lessened, although not too dramatically or detrimentaly, and is compensated for elsewhere...

And, yes, Karen does look healthy and lovely here!
 
Roger Nichols turned 81 in October 2021, this article ran at that time (my excerpts):

Engine Room | Roger Nichols​


"Nothing Nichols did would dent the charts until fate intervened. Tony Asher had been commissioned to write a jingle for the Crocker Bank.
An accident left him unable to see it through so he passed it to Roger and Paul. They wrote it at breakneck speed, just managing to meet the deadline set.
The commercial was about a wedding and was targeted at young people. The slogan was, “You’ve got a long way to go and we’d like to help you get there.” And the song was We’ve Only Just Begun."
"Probably the first recording was by ex-Parade member Smokey Roberds. And when Mark Lindsay’s disc began to take off, The Carpenters put out their version. Nichols and Williams watched it soar up the charts within a few weeks. To date, it has been played on the air more than four million times, becoming one of the top 50 songs of the 20th century. More Nichols/Williams hits followed for Richard and Karen, including
Rainy Days And Mondays and I Won’t Last A Day Without You."

Source:
 
Billboard, November 14, 1970:
"Carpenters guested on the Elwood Glover TV show this week. "
" A & M's Liam Median threw a reception for the Carpenters to celebrate the million plus sales in the U.S. on We've Only Just Begun."
 
Another recent Paul Williams interview discussing We've Only Just Begun.
Of course, what Paul Williams says about Karen Carpenter singing the song is true,
but, I add that the arrangement for the song is every bit as brilliant. That Richard Carpenter arrangement is also incredible.
Paul Williams (1:47-1:53): "...the fact is it was sung by an angel... I don't think was a hit song at all..."
Here:
 
I used to have this single a few decades ago. I always liked All Of My Life better than We've Only Just Begun. Don't get me wrong, the latter was a great A side choice but the former stood out for me and I think if dj's flipped it over, it might have increased the sales.
 
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