Carole King, born Carol Joan Klein on 9 February 1942, is an American singer-songwriter who has been active since 1958, initially as one of the staff songwriters at the Brill Building and later as a solo artist. She is the most successful female songwriter of the latter half of the 20th century in the US, having written or co-written 118 pop hits on the Billboard Hot 100. King also wrote 61 hits that charted in the UK, making her the most successful female songwriter on the UK singles charts between 1952 and 2005.

King’s major success began in the 1960s when she and her first husband, Gerry Goffin, wrote more than two dozen chart hits, many of which have become standards, for numerous artists. She has continued writing for other artists since then. King’s success as a performer in her own right did not come until the 1970s, when she sang her own songs, accompanying herself on the piano, in a series of albums and concerts.

In 1970 she experienced commercial disappointment with her debut album Writer which I thought was, and still is, a terrific album with many excellent songs.

King followed Writer in 1971 with Tapestry, which featured new compositions as well as reinterpretations of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.” The album was recorded concurrently with James Taylor’s Mud Slide Slim, with an overlapping set of musicians including King, Danny Kortchmar and Joni Mitchell. Both albums included “You’ve Got a Friend”, which was a number 1 hit for Taylor. King said in a 1972 interview that she “didn’t write it with James or anybody really specifically in mind but when James heard it he really liked it and wanted to record it”. Tapestry was an instant success. With numerous hit singles – including a Billboard No.1 with “It’s Too Late”. 

Carole King: Music was released in December 1971, certified gold on 9 December 1971. It entered the top ten at 8, becoming the first of many weeks Tapestry and Carole King: Music simultaneously occupied the top 10. The following week it rose to No.3 and finally to No.1 on January 1, 1972, staying there for three weeks. The album also spawned a top 10 hit, “Sweet Seasons”. Carole King: Music stayed on the Billboard pop album charts for 44 weeks and was eventually certified platinum.

Rhymes and Reasons (1972), and Fantasy (1973) followed, each earning gold certifications. Rhymes and Reasons produced another hit, “Been to Canaan”, and Fantasy produced two hits, “Believe in Humanity” and “Corazon” as well as another song that charted on the Hot 100, “You Light Up My Life”.

In 1973, King performed a free concert in New York City’s Central Park with 100,000 attending then in September 1974, King released her album Wrap Around Joy, which was certified gold on 16 October 1974, and entered the top ten at 7 on 19 October 1974. Two weeks later it reached 1 and stayed there one week. Wrap Around Joy spawned two hits. “Jazzman” was a single and reached number 2 on 9 November but fell out of the top ten the next week. “Nightingale”, a single released on 17 December, went to No. 9 on 1 March 1975.

To date King has made over 25 solo albums, the most successful being Tapestry, which held the record for most weeks at No. 1 by a female artist for more than 20 years. Her record sales were estimated at more than 75 million copies worldwide. She has won four Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for her songwriting. She is the recipient of the 2013 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the first woman to be so honoured. She is also a 2015 Kennedy Centre Honoree.

Let’s look a little more closely at the album Tapestry.

Tapestry is the second studio album by Carole King, released in 1971 on Ode Records and produced by Lou Adler. It is one of the best-selling albums of all time, with over 25 million copies sold worldwide. In the United States, it has been certified Diamond by the RIAA with more than 10 million copies sold. It received four Grammy Awards in 1972, including Album of the Year. The lead singles from the album—”It’s Too Late”/”I Feel the Earth Move”—spent five weeks at number one on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Easy Listening charts. In 2000 it was voted number 74 in Colin Larkin’s All Time Top 1000 Albums. In 2003, Tapestry was ranked number 36 on Rolling Stone list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

King wrote or co-wrote all of the songs on the album, several of which had already been hits for other artists such as Aretha Franklin’s “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” and The Shirelles’ “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” (in 1960). Three songs were co-written with King’s ex-husband Gerry Goffin. James Taylor, who encouraged King to sing her own songs and who also played on Tapestry, would later have a number one hit with “You’ve Got a Friend”. Two songs were co-written with Toni Stern: “It’s Too Late” and “Where You Lead”.

The album was recorded at Studio B, A&M Recording Studios during January 1971 with the support of Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, plus various experienced session musicians. Several of the musicians worked simultaneously on Taylor’s Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon album.

The cover photograph was taken by A&M staff photographer Jim McCrary at King’s Laurel Canyon home. It shows her sitting in a window frame, holding a tapestry that she’d hand-stitched herself, with her cat Telemachus at her feet.

The album was critically well-received; Village Voice critic Robert Christgau felt that her voice, free of “technical decorum”, would liberate female singers; while Jon Landau in Rolling Stone felt that King was one of the most creative pop music figures and had created an album of “surpassing personal-intimacy and musical accomplishment”.

Along with being selected Album of the Year, it also received Grammys for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, Record of the Year (“It’s Too Late”), and Song of the Year (“You’ve Got a Friend”), making King the first solo female artist to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year, and the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Song of the Year.

As noted above, several songs from the album were recorded by other artists and became hits while the album was still on the charts: James Taylor’s 1971 cover of “You’ve Got a Friend” hit number one in the US and number four in the UK, and Barbra Streisand’s 1971 studio recording of “Where You Lead” reached number 40 while a live recording of a medley in which Streisand paired the song with the Sweet Inspirations hit “Sweet Inspiration” reached number 37 the following year.

Tapestry frequently appears on critics’ lists of the best albums. In 2003, it ranked number 36 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list, and was listed by VH1 as number 39 on their list of 100 Greatest Albums, and was one of 50 recordings chosen to be added to the National Recording Registry. Recordings added to the National Recording Registry are picked to be preserved in the Library of Congress as they are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically important.” Based on such listings, Acclaimed Music ranks Tapestry as the 72nd most acclaimed album in history. 

In March 2016 it was announced that Carole King would perform the album live in its entirety for the first time at the British Summer Time Festival in Hyde Park, London on July 3, 2016. The performance was released the next year as Tapestry: Live at Hyde Park. 

I have selected a list that includes the whole Tapestry album and, as a bonus, a playlist from her Greatest hits album. There are a few songs from Tapestry in there too but I don’t think anyone will complain about that.

There is also a film of Carole King performing live in 1971 for The BBC. It’s a superb performance of some superb songs. 

I hope you enjoy listening. 

Tapestry (1971)

Greatest Hits Album

Carole King Live on The BBC 1971