Karen Carpenter gone 35 years tomorrow - I feel old

Wow, hard to believe she's been dead 35 years. Love The Carpenter's music then and now!

A Song for You – Remembering Karen Carpenter (35 Years Later)

 

Just got the audiophile release of Carpenters Singles 1969-1973 this past week.

How wonderful was that voice. Could have been the best pop voice ever.

 

I'm more of a rock n roll guy but goddam she had a voice. Tragic what happened to her.

 

Not really my kind of music, but she was a great talent. She suffered for too long and was gone too soon. RIP.

 

I still remember my sister calling that day telling me that Karen Carpenter was dead. I couldn't believe it. Such a loss at such an early age....
Little did I know then about eating disorders and how tragic they often end.
Anyway in my life the Carpenters' music has always been around and always will be.

 

I remember my mother coming into my room to tell me Karen (her favourite singer) had died. It would be just after 10pm that night (I’m in the UK). I was shocked, even though by then Karen’s anorexia was often spoken about in the press. I didn’t realise people could die from it.

It certainly doesn’t seem like 35 years ago. It’s quite fresh in some ways. I’m sad to think of all the things Karen missed. I’d seen recent-ish interviews where, although she was clearly very ill, she still had big plans for her life and career. A few months after she died, Richard, when asked if he thought there’d be another singer like Karen out there someday, said he doubted it. He was right.

 

She's been dead now longer than she lived. That is even scarier!
Plus it's rather sad that a singer as natural and as beautiful as Karen Carpenter has become the poster-girl for anorexia nervosa.
I just hope it's scared some people enough to get help.

 

Karen's death was the first I recall hearing of anorexia nervosa. But in the UK people who were fans of one-time child star Lena Zavaroni had heard of it several years earlier, as Lena developed it as a teenager in the late 1970s.

And for me personally....my dad was dying of cancer at the same time Karen died. In fact part of the last conversation I had with him was me telling him she'd died. He was shocked to say the least....and was gone himself late that evening.

 

Makes me sad-eating disorders are no joke. I had one and wouldn't wish it on anybody.

 

Sad... I've got a really nice Best of, actually two versions, and it's hard not to get a bit choked up during some of those songs. Was a closet fan in the 70's when I was in my teens, but doesn't she just have the perfect voice.

 

I don't feel old ( yet ) but is a reminder of how fast 35 years goes by.

 

I got into the Carpenters music recently through a member on this forum. I had always thought they were muzak fluff, but man was I wrong. Karen's vocals are so smooth, and it always feels like she's singing right to me, what a talent. She seemed like such a kind soul, such a shame she had to live in such agony. Her music will live on, and she will never be forgotten.

 

and thankfully we have a her beautiful amazing voice that will live on...a tragedy beyond words...

 

I have recently re-connected with Carpenters music .... it sends me straight back to my early 70s childhood, and the sad songs get the tears flowing for real ....

And then there's "Calling Occupants Of Interstellar Craft" .... my god, what a mind-blowing masterpiece ! Makes me expect the clouds to part and the mothership to reveal itself .... awesome...... Karen, 'We are your friends' indeed.

 

I wish every insecure kid with a mental eating disorder, could look at themselves in a mirror, and instead of seeing they need to lose weight, would really see themselves, and what they're doing right.

Ya know, it took me years of insecurity to be able to look at myself, smile, and like what I'm looking at.

Even odder, that I'm not all that great looking now-!

But I can focus on that smiling face looking back at me, and not see fear, or worry, or inferiority, and - dare I say it - have a nice day. I can't wait to see who looks back at me in the mirror tomorrow!

Karen's issues started me thinking like that in the first place.

And here I was grateful, just to hear her sing.

 

Best female singing voice that I have ever heard.

 

SAD...it all could have been avoided...she straightened out too late. : (

 

This is a beauty:

 

That’s a great song. Underrated too.

 

I don’t think she did ‘straighten out’ did she? At the end she’d gained some weight but only because she’d been force fed in hospital. The last pictures I saw of her from about 3 weeks before she died showed her looking very ill.

 

supposedly she was making a concerted effort...

 

I just saw a TV report about her life and it appears her brother and mother had such controlling personalities she couldn't breath.
Her brother especially didn't want to loose his meal ticket.He would say we love Karen, we this and that, never I love, which made
it the family, ie her against her mother, much like Brian Wilson dealing with his Dad. She needed a friend, he brother didn't get it.
Such a sad and unhappy life for someone with so much talent and love to sing. I was never a fan the likes that bought her music
but I always thought she was a wonderful singer with a voice that was one in a generation. I think she could have been a very big
star, the kind that lasts for decades. It's a very sad story, I recommend the documentary to anyone that's a fan of her work.

 

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