Photos
Musician Spotlight: The Folk-Rock Queen of the 1970s
I have two words for you:
Carole King
If that name doesn’t mean anything to you, then you need to go to Pandora or Amazon Music or wherever you get your music, and learn about her.
For those of you born after the year 2000 or if you never watched an episode of Gilmore Girls (more on that shortly), Carole King is an American singer-songwriter and musician who is renowned for her extensive contributions to popular music.
According to Wikipedia, King wrote or co-wrote 118 (yep, you read that number correctly) songs that charted on the Billboard Hot all during the latter half of the 20th century and 61 songs that reached the UK charts. That makes her the most successful female songwriter of the UK singles charts from 1962 through 2005.
For those of you who still need to be schooled a bit more, you can think of Carole King like the Taylor Swift of her generation just without all the glam, and even more talent.
If you want a true history lesson about Carole King, you can visit her official website here.
In the meantime, please read on to learn about a very important record that she still holds.
Her sophomore album Tapestry was released on February 10, 1971. That landmark album spent 15 consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, a feat that remains the longest ever by a female solo artist. And, more than five decades later, that album was recently named one of the best albums of the 1970s by BBC Music Magazine.
Carole King had already been writing (mainly with her then husband Gerry Goffin) many, many hits for a decade, her 1971 album “cemented her as one of the most important singer-songwriters in modern music.
The lead single, “It’s Too Late,” paired with “I Feel the Earth Move,” spent five weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. And another song from that album – “You’ve Got a Friend” – later became a chart-topping hit for James Taylor.
Another song from that album – “Where You Lead” – hit the number 3 position on the Adult Contemporary Chart back in when it was released, but the single also found “new life” in the 2000s when King re-recorded it as a duet with her daughter Louise Goffin. That re-release became the theme song for…you got it…Gilmore Girls.
NOTE: Eagle eyed fans of that long-running series will hopefully remember that King had a small recurring role on the show, playing Sophie Bloom, a music store owner; a role which she reprised in Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life that aired on Netflix, which – GASP! – aired back in 2016.
Back to Tapestry…
That album went on to win four Grammy Awards in 1972, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. What’s more, Carole King became the first woman to win Song of the Year and the first solo female artist to win Record of the Year.
Tapestry remained on the Billboard 200 for more than six years and has been certified 14x Platinum by the RIAA (otherwise known as the Recording Industry Association of America). The album has sold more than 25 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time.
Six years ago, Rolling Stone ranked the album number 25 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
That’s not all…
Tapestry has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry.
Needless to say, regardless of your musical preference, you owe it to yourself, and in honor of its 55 year history, to take a listen to Tapestry the first chance you get.
Here is a video of “It’s Too Late”:
Source: Parade.com
0 comments