Why Karen Carpenter Matters

Why Karen Carpenter Matters
Author :
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Total Pages : 153
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781477318867
ISBN-13 : 1477318860
Rating : 4/5 (67 Downloads)

Synopsis Why Karen Carpenter Matters by : Karen Tongson

In the '60s and '70s, America's music scene was marked by raucous excess, reflected in the tragic overdoses of young superstars such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. At the same time, the uplifting harmonies and sunny lyrics that propelled Karen Carpenter and her brother, Richard, to international fame belied a different sort of tragedy—the underconsumption that led to Karen's death at age thirty-two from the effects of an eating disorder. In Why Karen Carpenter Matters, Karen Tongson (whose Filipino musician parents named her after the pop icon) interweaves the story of the singer’s rise to fame with her own trans-Pacific journey between the Philippines—where imitations of American pop styles flourished—and Karen Carpenter’s home ground of Southern California. Tongson reveals why the Carpenters' chart-topping, seemingly whitewashed musical fantasies of "normal love" can now have profound significance for her—as well as for other people of color, LGBT+ communities, and anyone outside the mainstream culture usually associated with Karen Carpenter’s legacy. This hybrid of memoir and biography excavates the destructive perfectionism at the root of the Carpenters’ sound, while finding the beauty in the singer's all too brief life.

Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter

Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter
Author :
Publisher : Omnibus Press
Total Pages : 493
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780857127693
ISBN-13 : 0857127691
Rating : 4/5 (93 Downloads)

Synopsis Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter by : Randy Schmidt

Karen Carpenter was the instantly recognisable lead singer of the Carpenters. The top-selling American musical act of the 1970s, they delivered the love songs that defined a generation. Karen's velvety voice on a string of 16 consecutive Top 20 hits from 1970 to 1976 – including Close to You, We've Only Just Begun, Rainy Days and Mondays, Superstar, and Hurting Each Other – propelled the duo to worldwide stardom and record sales of over 100 million. Karen's musical career was short – only 13 years. During that time, the Carpenters released 10 studio albums, toured more than 200 days a year, taped five television specials, and won three Grammys and an American Music Award. But that's only part of Karen's story. As the world received news of her death at 32 years of age in 1983, she became the proverbial poster child for anorexia nervosa. Little Girl Blue is an intimate profile of Karen Carpenter, a girl from a modest Connecticut upbringing who became a Superstar. Based on exclusive interviews with nearly 100 friends and associates, including record producers, studio musicians, songwriters, television directors, photographers, radio personalities, classmates, childhood friends, neighbours, personal assistants, romantic interests, hairdressers, and housekeepers.'...thorough and affectionate biography of a singer who's been constantly undervalued by the music industry.' MOJO 'Schmidt cannot be faulted... carefully factual, sensitively pitched book.' The Word 'The first truly convincing account of her nightmarish story.' The Guardian

Lead Sister: The Story of Karen Carpenter

Lead Sister: The Story of Karen Carpenter
Author :
Publisher : Nine Eight Books
Total Pages : 276
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781788708258
ISBN-13 : 1788708253
Rating : 4/5 (58 Downloads)

Synopsis Lead Sister: The Story of Karen Carpenter by : Lucy O'Brien

When the Carpenters first toured Japan, a journalist mistakenly referred to Karen as the 'lead sister' of the band. This designation stuck and Karen liked it so much that she had a T-shirt custom-made with the slogan, which she wore while drumming on the band's 1976 world tour. The term also sums up the approach of this biography: a celebratory re-evaluation of a pioneering woman. As one of the biggest-selling acts of the 1970s, sibling duo Richard and Karen Carpenter created lush soundscapes of melodic pop, producing global hits like 'We've Only Just Begun', 'Top of the World' and 'Close to You'. However, though Karen is rightly recognised as one of the greatest singers in popular music, the tragedy of her early death in 1983, at the age of just thirty-two, often overshadows all that she achieved. She has long been portrayed as a victim, controlled by her family and exploited by the music industry. This book now seeks to reframe her life and legacy. Through fresh interviews with friends, musicians and co-workers, bestselling author Lucy O'Brien's fascinating profile explores Karen's contributions in the studio as a singer, drummer, arranger and producer, as well as tracing the roots of the Carpenters' sound and of Karen's distinctive vocals. Forty years after her death, it also honours the lead sister's achievements in the face of her struggle with anorexia, as viewed through the lens of new perspectives on eating disorders and mental health. Yet, despite the chronic nature of her illness, Karen Carpenter was, above all, a creative, dedicated and assured artist whose music delivers an emotional resonance that has transcended generations - and that is how she should be remembered.

Lead Sister

Lead Sister
Author :
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages : 367
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781538184479
ISBN-13 : 1538184478
Rating : 4/5 (79 Downloads)

Synopsis Lead Sister by : Lucy O'Brien

"This may well become the definitive biography of Carpenter....Pop music fans will appreciate this strong biography." —Library Journal, Starred Review Named a Financial Times 2023 Best Book of the Year – Pop Music Named one of The Times and The Sunday Times, UK 17 best rock and pop music books of 2023 A groundbreaking biography reevaluating the life and legacy of transcendent musician Karen Carpenter As one of the biggest-selling acts of the 1970s, the Carpenters are celebrated for their melodic pop and unforgettable hits like “Close to You,” “Yesterday,” and “Top of the World.” Though Karen is rightly recognized as one of the greatest singers in popular music, the tragedy of her early death in 1983 at the young age of just thirty-two sometimes overshadows her incredible achievements. She has often been portrayed as a victim, controlled by her family and exploited by the music industry. Forty years after her death, this biography reframes her life and legacy as a pioneering woman with her own vision and agency. With exclusive interviews with friends, musicians, and collaborators, bestselling author Lucy O’Brien explores Karen’s contributions as a singer, drummer, arranger, and producer, and traces the roots of the Carpenters’ iconic sound. Lead Sister also honors Karen’s triumphs in the face of her struggle with anorexia, providing contemporary perspectives on eating disorders and mental health. Despite the chronic nature of her illness, Karen Carpenter was, above all, a creative, dedicated, and assured artist whose music delivers an emotional resonance that has transcended generations—and that is how she should be remembered.

Carpenters

Carpenters
Author :
Publisher : Chronicle Books
Total Pages : 344
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781648960918
ISBN-13 : 164896091X
Rating : 4/5 (18 Downloads)

Synopsis Carpenters by : Mike Cidoni Lennox

Introduction by Richard Carpenter The definitive biography of one of the most enduring and endeared recording artists in history—the Carpenters—is told for the first time from the perspective of Richard Carpenter, through more than 100 hours of exclusive interviews and some 200 photographs from Richard's personal archive, many never published. After becoming multimillion-selling, Grammy-winning superstars with their 1970 breakthrough hit "(They Long to Be) Close to You," Richard and Karen Carpenter would win over millions of fans worldwide with a record-breaking string of hits including "We've Only Just Begun," "Top of the World," and "Yesterday Once More." By 1975, success was taking its toll. Years of jam-packed work schedules, including hundreds of concert engagements, proved to be just too much for the Carpenters to keep the hits coming—and, ultimately, to keep the music playing at all. However, Richard and Karen never took their adoring public, or each other, for granted. In Carpenters: The Musical Legacy, Richard Carpenter tells his story for the first time. With candor, heart, and humor, he sheds new light on the Carpenters' trials and triumphs—work that remains the gold standard for melodic pop. This beautifully illustrated definitive biography, with exclusive interviews and never-before-seen photographs, is a must-have for any Carpenters fan.

Starving for Attention

Starving for Attention
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 187
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0859242315
ISBN-13 : 9780859242318
Rating : 4/5 (15 Downloads)

Synopsis Starving for Attention by : Cherry Boone O'Neill

Yesterday Once More

Yesterday Once More
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 260
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0967597315
ISBN-13 : 9780967597317
Rating : 4/5 (15 Downloads)

Synopsis Yesterday Once More by : Randy Schmidt

Using articles, interviews, essays, and reviews written by numerous pop journalists and historians, Schmidt provides insight into the music and lives of Karen and Richard Carpenter, one of the most successful pop music acts of the 1970s.

Why Lhasa de Sela Matters

Why Lhasa de Sela Matters
Author :
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Total Pages : 200
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781477319628
ISBN-13 : 147731962X
Rating : 4/5 (28 Downloads)

Synopsis Why Lhasa de Sela Matters by : Fred Goodman

An artist in every sense of the word, Lhasa de Sela wowed audiences around the globe with her multilingual songs and spellbinding performances, mixing together everything from Gypsy music to Mexican rancheras, Americana and jazz, chanson française, and South American folk melodies. In Canada, her album La Llorona won the Juno Award and went gold, and its follow-up, The Living Road, won a BBC World Music Award. Tragically, de Sela succumbed to breast cancer in 2010 at the age of thirty-seven after recording her final album, Lhasa. Tracing de Sela’s unconventional life and introducing her to a new generation, Why Lhasa de Sela Matters is the first biography of this sophisticated creative icon. Raised in a hippie family traveling between the United States and Mexico in a converted school bus, de Sela developed an unquenchable curiosity, with equal affinities for the romantic, mystic, and cerebral. Becoming a sensation in Montreal and Europe, the trilingual singer rejected a conventional path to fame, joining her sisters’ circus troupe in France. Revealing the details of these and other experiences that inspired de Sela to write such vibrant, otherworldly music, Why Lhasa de Sela Matters sings with the spirit of this gifted firebrand.

Lily Dale: Awakening

Lily Dale: Awakening
Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages : 236
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780802784629
ISBN-13 : 0802784623
Rating : 4/5 (29 Downloads)

Synopsis Lily Dale: Awakening by : Wendy Corsi Staub

Book one in New York Times bestselling author Wendy Corsi Staub's YA series, Lily Dale. Calla thought that her boyfriend breaking up with her in a text message was the worst thing that could ever happen to her. But just two weeks later, her mother died in a freak accident, and life as she knew it was completely over. With her father heading to California for a new job, they decide that Calla should spend a few weeks with the grandmother she barely knows while he gets them set up. To Calla's shock, her mother's hometown of Lily Dale is a town full of psychics-including her grandmother. Suddenly, the fact that her mother never talked about her past takes on more mysterious overtones. The longer she stays in town, the stranger things become, as Calla starts to experience unusual and unsettling events that lead her to wonder whether she has inherited her grandmother's unique gift. Is it this gift that is making her suspect that her mother's death was more than an accident, or is it just an overactive imagination? Staying in Lily Dale is the only way to uncover the truth. But will Calla be able to deal with what she learns about her mother's past and her own future? Don't miss these other books for young readers by Wendy Corsi Staub: Witch Hunt Scream and Scream Again! Lily Dale Series: Awakening Believing Connecting Discovering Teen Angel series: Mitzi Malloy and the Anything-But-Heavenly Summer Brittany Butterfield and the Back-To-School Blues Henry Hopkins and the Horrible Halloween Happening New York Times Bestsellers: Don't Scream (2007), Most Likely to Die (2007) , The Final Victim, She Loves Me Not USA Today Bestsellers: Don't Scream (2007), Most Likely to Die (2007), The Final Victim, The Last to Know, In the Blink of an Eye, Dearly Beloved

She Bop II

She Bop II
Author :
Publisher : A&C Black
Total Pages : 545
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780826472083
ISBN-13 : 0826472087
Rating : 4/5 (83 Downloads)

Synopsis She Bop II by : Lucy O'Brien

Popular music grew out of ragtime, vaudeville and the blues to become global mass entertainment. Women like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith were the original pop divas, yet eighty years after they blazed a trail, have their successors achieved the recognition and affirmation they deserve? Or has the only was to success been to slot into saleable images of the cute baby or sexy chanteuse? Lucy O'Brien has written the ultimate hands-on history of women in rock, pop, and soul. Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Dusty Springfield, Patti Smith, Madonna, Joni Mitchell, whitney Houston, Courtney Love, Alanis Morissette, Destiny's child - all the key names are here. But She Bop II refuses to look at women artists simply as personalities, problems or victims. From dream babes to rock chicks, riot grrrls and ragamuffins, girlpower, Lilith Fair rock and the rise of the corporate diva, She Bop II is the uncompromising story of women as creators and innovators. Lucy O'Brien is the author of two previous books: the bestsellers Annie Lennox (1991) and Dusty (1989). She has contributed to the Guardian, Sunday Times, Observer, Marie Claire, New Musical Express and The Face, and worked extensively in TV and radio, as both guest pundit and producer.