The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
The enduring enigma of Karen Carpenter
This month marks the 40th anniversary of the untimely passing of Karen Carpenter. The singer, whose worldwide popularity has not waned for 53 years, was a month shy of her 33rd birthday when her heart stopped beating the morning of Feb. 4, 1983. Her death was attributed to the effects of anorexia nervosa, from which she had suffered for several years.
In many ways, we’ve only just begun to try to figure out what really happened to that poor unfortunate phenom with the rich contralto voice. Some of what is discussed from time to time has the shadow of controversy. Other times not so much. But in any case it’s worth looking into, particularly if other people with similar personal narratives might one day benefit from the exploration.
What’s more, Karen’s international renown notwithstanding, it may also be instructive to deliberate whether or not she should have been in show business in the first place. I’m sure the hate mail that follows a pronouncement like that — one likely to cast a somewhat more controversial shadow — will be overwhelming. But if her fame was one of the elements that played into her troubled narrative, it’s worth discussing, and I’m willing to take the hit.
The Carpenters — Karen and her older brother Richard — sold more than 90 million records. Several singles reached No. 1 or 2 on the charts. Twelve were in the top 10. They released 10 albums prior to Karen’s death. Richard’s lush, intuitive arrangements and Karen’s threeoctave range — the word velvety has been used countless times to describe it — combined to create an almost exclusive brand of easy listening. Between 1970 and 1973 alone we enjoyed almost a dozen hits, including “(They Long to be) Close to You,” “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “For All We Know,” “Rainy Days and Mondays,” “Yesterday Once More,” “Top of the World,” and “I Won’t Last a Day Without You.”
Karen’s relentless fan base, in concert with social media, has arguably made her more popular today than she was back then. On the flip side, there are still a significant number of people who couldn’t care less, or at least won’t admit how much they like to listen to her when no one knows they are.
In short, Karen Carpenter was and is an enigma. For all we know, she’ll always be one. There have been half a dozen books about her, several hundred articles, a few documentaries, a couple of websites, tens of millions of YouTube views, and tens of thousands of comments to go along with them. That’s the reality of being not just an enigma, but one with a mesmerizing voice. With Karen, there was never a note out of place. It was Karen who seemed out of place. She had internal struggles the likes of which we may never truly understand.
As most people with a passing knowledge of Carpenter lore are aware, Karen and Richard had a strong-willed, opinionated mother who, when her kids were little, threw the bulk of her hope and attention into Richard’s musical talent. He was a piano prodigy who preferred to stay indoors learning how to compose and arrange.
Karen was a tomboy who liked to play softball.
This is seen by many as the psychological basis for the issues that plagued Karen’s life later on. Many people claim it’s a major element that led to her anxiety, which in turn led to her anorexia.
But as my mother used to say, you can’t blame everything on your mother.
As a result of my journalistic work on the life and career of Karen Carpenter, I have watched hundreds of videos, and my armchair analysis concludes that there was not just one Karen, but many — certainly not in a “Three Faces of Eve” sort of way, but in a manner that suggests a complex psychology which is too far in the past to properly assess. There were subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle differences from month to month and certainly year to year in the way she looked, smiled, emoted, performed, comported herself, and even, to an extent, sang. It seems to me that the lovely, goofy, cheery, melodically poised singer did not have a solid core of character. Her disposition seemed to change often. In my view, that’s reason enough to get off the bad-mother bandwagon — another controversial stance? — and accept the theory that other deeply rooted elements, many of them, were at play.
Karen handled herself well on stage, though it also seemed as if she worked hard to give that impression. She didn’t want to disappoint; after all, she knew what disappointment was like. As has been well documented, what Karen craved more than anything else was to have children — and a loving husband to go along with them. She had neither, and the reasons why may be built into some of those same internal issues. It’s not impossible to believe that she could have had a happier existence — one that didn’t end so early — had she lived a life devoid of international stardom.
Which, of course, brings up the most controversial conundrum of all: If fans around the globe had a choice between a Karen Carpenter who was not famous and still alive, and one who gave us all that beautiful music but died at age 32, which would we choose?
Joel Samberg’s 2013 report on NPR’s “All Things Considered” on the 30th anniversary of Karen Carpenter’s death preceded his book on her legacy called “Some Kind of Lonely Clown.” Samberg writes the “Off Ramp” for Connecticut Magazine and has a book of short stories coming out in April called “Weinerface.”