Carole King Overview - Essay Example

Carole King Carole King is a famous American singer and song who greatly influenced American and world music industry. Her songs were on the top positions in American charts; many of them were written for such popular bands as Animals, the Cookies and The Shirelles. King is the first female songwriter who has achieved world recognition and positive reception. Her songs ruin the stereotype of gendered attitude to music; unlike other artists and songwriters of her times, she has never tried to look or sound as a sexy pop diva. This essay will focus on Carole King as a songwriter and personality with the purpose to analyze the impact of her career on music industry in the USA. Carole King: Life & Career Different periods of Kings life are defined by her private life. It is the reason why it is necessary to start from the biography of the songwriter before moving to the analysis of her songs. Carole Klein was lucky to born in New York City which was always the center of business and cultural life in the USA. She grew up in Brooklyn and her parents started noticing the gift of their child when she was really young. Music education began immediately; at the age of 4, Carole started learning how to play the piano. She was definitely cut out for music career as she started writing songs when she was just a teenager. Her high school years were extremely important for her later career because she chose her pseudonym King and organized her first band called Co-Sines ("Carole King"). It was in college where she met other famous song writers including Gerry Goffin, Neil Sedaka and Paul Simon. It was a start of productive creative partnership and family life with Goffin. At the age of 17 Carole became pregnant; this fact resulted in wedding and successful career for both. Goffin and King continued their business being a family. Their songs impressed Don Kirshner, who was a well-known music publisher, and he offered the couple to sing a contact with Aldon Music. Goffin and King wrote top hits for various stars including Bobby Wee, The Shirelles and The Drifters; their sons were very simple and commercially successful (Simon & Schuster). The wast majority of songs was performed by female singers and bands. The couple achieved impressive success writing songs for the most notable artists of their time. Even when they wrote a song for their babysitter, it became a hit. 1961 was a good year for Goffin and King so they decided to create their own record label to work independently from others. Unfortunately their business failed, but it brought another benefits to King because she met her second husband Charles Larkey ("Carole King"). It was the end of King+Goffin era and the beginning of a new life in LA where King moved with her new husband and 2 kids. Late 60-s and the beginning of 70-s embraced very important period for Kings career when she transformed from a songwriter to a singer/songwriter establishing a new genre of music. King created a band called City where she played together with her husband Larkey and their friend Danny Kortchmar ("Carole King"). According to the Rolling Stone, the band could not go on tour because Kind was afraid of the stage. To some reason, the band was not a successful project, but it led to the creation of Tapestry which brought success and recognition to King once again (Simon & Schuster). This album included the most popular songs by King and, according to Havranek, it remained in the charts for around 302 weeks. The single Its Too Late was #1 for a long time, the album remained in the top for 4 years and won 4 Grammy awards (Havranek). Both Kings LPs released in early 60-s became gold. Each of them contained a couple of songs that were on top positions in US charts. In 1975 King began to write with Goffin again (Simon & Schuster). Their creative reunion bough positive results as King decided to switch to Capitol Records and released new album Simple Things which became gold. Perhaps, it was a peak of Kings career because after this great achievement it went down. 1980-s leveled Kings career and kept it running on a quite modest level. Despite her recognition by US music industry, her mew recordings could not achieve the same success as singes from 60-s and 70-s. She revisited her best songs written with Goffin and included them in her 1980-s LP called Pearls (Simon & Schuster). Later she released 4 albums in 1989, 1993, 2001 and 2011. In 2013 she received a Grammy award for her lifetime achievement in music. In 2014 she received the Musiccares Person of the Year Award (“Hilary Duff: Carole King Was Her Road Trip Music”). Apart from this, she is actively involved in environment protection and support of Democrats. Obviously from Kings biography, her career can be divided into 3 periods presented by years of collaboration with Goffin, her solo career, which climbs to its top with the release of Tapestry, and later years career. All these periods have representative songs which will be analyzed in this essay. The first period of can be best discussed on the example of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” written by King in collaboration with Goffin and performed by The Shirelles. Second period is best to review on the example of “Youve Got a Friend” which won Song of the Year award in 1972. "Love Makes the World” presents later career of King. This particular single is relevant for the analysis because it shows later development in Kings career and contains certain experiments with established lyrical style typical for King. Will You Love Me Tomorrow Will You Love Me Tomorrow performed by The Shirelles is an R&B single released in 1960. It has a fast tempo and a cheerful melody. Performance by this girls band received positive critical acclaim as it was extremely popular right after its release. This song sounds entertaining and bright. Considering the fact that it was recorded in the era of active development and experimentation with jazz music, it has certain elements of swing in it (Mp3SuperSound). Overall, it has everything to be treated as a good dance music of its time. Thematically, this song expresses the concerns of women about men as they wonder whether their relationships would last for a long time or it is just one night stand and all the words are said with a purpose to deceive them. It is more than a pop song created for a mere entertainment because it has a meaning and shows that being deceitful hurts other people. Even though it was on the 1st place in Billboard 100, it is not the version most people know. Carole King performed and recorded this song in 1971 and it was listed in Tapestry together with other hits (Havranek). It was slower than the original version. Also, it reflected Kings lyrical and a bit melancholic style of performance. Solo vocal in Kings version adds more intimate context to the song. In the version performed by King, the song becomes pretty close to the sound of rock or country ballads. Kings strong vocal and masterful piano party makes it a standard for other singers even now. This song can be found in repertoires of many contemporary female singers because it remains a standard of a lyrical ballad. For instance, it was performed by Amy Winehouse and Norah Jones, John Frusciante and The Bee Gees among others. It is majorly covered by pop female singers who use elements of jazz or blues music or vocal in their songs. What is more important, artists prefer to cover the version recorded by King instead of following the original performance by The Shirelles. Overall, Carole King added more popular rock elements to old-fashioned R&B and made this song sound much better and emotion. This song is very important for her career because it made people talk about her in two different dimensions: as a songwriter in 60-s and as a singer in 70-s. Youve Got a Friend Youve Got a Friend is also written in a form of soft rock ballad. It is slow and melancholic as well as Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow and it was released by 2 singers at a time. Carole King listed it in her Tapestry album and it was also performed by James Taylor. The version by James Taylor became more popular than solo performance by Carole King. There were many occasions when Taylor and King performed it together. The version by King is performed on the piano while Taylor chooses guitar and percussion making it more county/rock like. This song was a real hit when it was released mainly because of its lyrics. It speaks about true friendship, mutual respect, help and love to each other. It was perceived positively because it presented valuable thoughts and appreciation of good relationships. The version by Taylor was #1 on Billboard 100; however, some critics were more impressed by Kings performance. According to Stewart Mason, Kings voice is a better fit for this song because it is shy and sincere. Moreover, strings in the recording released by King add certain intimate and lyrical shade to the meaning of the song. Youve Got a Friend is still popular as an exemplar soft rock song of its time. According to the Mojo Magazine, King confessed that Youve Got a Friend was a special song for her because it “wrote itself”. She experienced the moment of pure inspiration when she created it. In any case, this song is considered to be one of the best songs by Carole King ever. Youve Got a Friend and Will You Love Me Tomorrow versions by King present her genuine style in music. Both songs sound as soft rock ballads. Tender music is blended with string and expressive vocal party which is silent in the first part of the song and becomes more intensive to the refrain. Love Makes the World Love Makes the World retains Kings stylistic features; at the same time, it becomes different due to Kings desire to incorporate relevant elements of contemporary music to her authentic style. Being an established artist with a highly recognizable style, it is difficult to make radical changes. Moreover, in promo video about the release, King confessed that she wanted to show that she develops and stays in her age and style categories (TheCaroleKing). In this song Carole King experiments with vocal a lot. She abandons her lyrical and shy singing and substitutes it with a more relaxed, reading-like style. Doing this she makes a tribute to growing popularity of hip-hop, rad and pop music in the beginning of 90-s. The refrain of the song is more alike to traditional Kings style (TheCaroleKing). One more major difference between this song and her songs written in 70-80-s is that it seems to be less melancholic and dramatic. Kings career peak coincided with the most lyrical and touching songs she wrote. In the same promo video King shows that she is aware that most people are familiar only with her 70-s music and all her new songs are addressed exclusively to committed fans (TheCaroleKing). Now Carole King records her music independently and slightly experiments with new tendencies in music she likes. Kings Influence on Contemporary Music Industry Diving deeper into Kings life and music in particular, it is not difficult to outline numerous reasons why she is a major influencer in music industry. According to Havranek, she has written more than 500 songs for different artists including herself during her career. Her songs touch upon core values of humanity such as love, friendship, relationships between men and women and other themes that people care about. She has created a new image of a female songwriter who is smart, talented and successful and natural. She has never used her appearance, extraordinary behavior or other tricks used by female pop singers to stand out of the crowd. People love her music because it has a meaning and it coincides with their thoughts and feelings. Her songs express her moral standing and outlook on the world; even if they are not about something cool, they always include something fair, good, positive or thought-provoking. Carole King provides a positive role model to all female artists showing that they also can sing about something that makes sense and inspires others to be better. Kings individual singing and performance style adds more honesty and sincerity in her music. Her voice is not perfect but it is powerful and natural which totally supports image of the singer in music industry. The music itself is lovable; it does not try to impress people by its complexity. It sounds simple, recognizable and lyrical (Havranek). Her impact on modern music industry is outstanding. For instance, in one of the interviews, Hillary Duff confessed that Carole King gave her so much inspiration to start her career and achieve more. She still recollects her childhood when her family travelled all nught by car to attend Kings concert (“Hilary Duff: Carole King Was Her Road Trip Music”). Lady Gaga states that she has been following Carole King since her school years (Seemayer). The cover of Will You Love Me Tomorrow by Amy Winehouse has more than 11 million views on YouTube which proves that some touching songs written by Carole King still resonate after 40 years from their release in 70-s (BebeLeStrange). To crown it all, 2013 was a great year because Carole King received Grammy award for her life contribution to music development (“Carole King: Lifetime Achievement Award”). She has established industry standards and she is a rare example of the situation when a songwriter does not try to hide from publicity and actively writes songs for personal career alongside with commercially successful songs for other performers. Even now it is very popular for singers to write song themselves because it gives a credit to their talent and excuses imperfections of their voice especially if these singers are not professionals. Also, she proves that women can achieve success in music industry without sexualization of their appearance, performance and lytics. Carole King has always prefered remaining herself on the stage; she wears relaxed clothes, does not apply heavy makeup and does not sing about something that does not make sense to her personally. She looks as a real woman and it makes other people trust her and appreciate her for her music and real contribution to music industry regardless of her appearance. King presents a new image of women in rock music; they are natural, smart and talented. They can work as hard as men and be as successful as they are. Also, she initiated a new genre of songwriter/singer which was immediately taken by her contemporaries. Conclusion In summary, Carole King is a great songwriter who positively impacts music development in the USA and in the world. Even though the peak of her career passed long ago, she still remains active and continues writing songs for numerous singers including herself. It took her much time to develop her own style in music, and this lyrical style became her signature. Many popular singers still cover her songs because they astonish people by their depth and strong emotional charge. Carole King does not only writes commercially successful songs; her songs communicate authors strong moral standing and inspire people to appreciate what they have and what they care about. Many female singers confess that Carole King is their icon because she is a positive role model to follow in the world of show business where it is almost impossible to meet a person who manages to be commercially successful and do not make trash music. There is a story behind every song by Carole King because each of them spreads honesty and sincerity valued by their author. She has an outstanding personality not spoiled by her successful career; it is definitely the best result one can have after 50 years in show business. Works Cited BebeLeStrange. “Amy Winehouse - Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” . YouTube. 2007. Video. June 5, 2015. "Carole King." Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2015. Web. 06 June 2015. “Carole King: Lifetime Achievement Award” . Grammy.com. 2013. Video. June 6, 2015. “Carole King. Tapestry”. Mojo Magazine. The Mojo Collection 4th Edition. 2007. 229. Print. Havranek, Carrie. "Carole King." Women Icons of Popular Music: Rebels, Rockers, and Renegades. Vol. 2. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2009. 233­52. Print. “Hilary Duff: Carole King Was Her Road Trip Music”. Grammy.com. 2014. Web. June 6, 2015. Mason, Stewart. “Carole King. Youve Got a Friend”. AllMusic. 2015. Web. June 6, 2015. Mirelladue. “Carole King, Youve got a friend”. YouTube. 2010. Video. June 5, 2015. Mp3SuperSound. “THE SHIRELLES - Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”. YouTube. 2013. June 6, 2015. Seemayer, Zach. “Lady Gaga Celebrates Carole Kings Musical Impact”. ET Online. 2014. Web. June 6, 2015. Simon & Schuster . “Carole King”. The Rolling Stone. 2001. TheCaroleKing. “Love Makes the World”. YouTube. 2012. Video. June 5, 2015. TheCaroleKing. “Love Makes The World - The Album”. YouTube. 2012. Video. June 6, 2015. Whiteley, Sheila. Women and popular music: Sexuality, identity and subjectivity. Routledge, 2013. “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?”. Tapestry. Perf. Carole King. Prod. Lou Adler. Ode Records, 1971. LP Read More