Guilty Pleasures Pt1

Oh Boy! This is going to be ugly. Those of a sensitive disposition may wish to look away now.

Trawling around in some of the more musically orientated blogs, it seems that the flavour of the month is to list out your musical guilty pleasures so that we can either furtively agree or laugh helplessly and roll around on the floor at the sheer bad taste. This confessional entails revealing those artists, bands or individual songs that by common consent are so bad or uncool or both that most people with even a modicum of nous wouldn’t go near them with a conductor’s baton, but which are strangely attractive and may even hold a special place in your record collection. Yikes!

As one to jump on any bandwagon, I thought I would do something similar - but different. So instead of posting a list, I intend to do an occasional series relating to a single song/band/artist each time. In this, part 1, I confess to a sneaking regard for Karen Carpenter. See, I’ve done it now so there’s no going back.

Of course, as most people with any appreciation at all realise, the real problem with the Carpenters was their choice of material. Most of it was unbearably twee and just makes my toes curl to think of it. But a very small sample was different and it is here that I direct your attention. In particular I am thinking of ‘Goodbye to Love’ (obviously), ‘Rainy Days and Mondays’ and the cream of the crop, ‘Superstar’ – all of which were quite wonderful. The rest is unlistenable.

They are wonderful because the songs are half decent and Karen’s voice is at its best and it is at its best when in its lower register. This is the key to a good Carpenters song. When her voice rises into its middle and upper registers it sounds vaguely like most other female singers but in its lower register she is queen. The power, the control! It is a thing of beauty that no-one else can quite match. Just have a listen to ‘Superstar’ to hear how unique she is when the melody plunges down into the depths during the verse. There is no loss of power or volume – the sort of difficulties that afflict most other singers - just a rich reverberating sound that wraps around you and ...well..yes, exactly.

There is an innate sadness in that voice at low frequencies that is massively appealing and this is why tripe like ‘Jambalaya’ sung in her upper register is unbearably smug in the sort of way that campfire songs invariably are. They just scream ‘We’re all having a good time, aren’t we?’ Well, no, actually.

So there you have it. If I can still show my face and summon up the courage, I’ll be back with part 2 sometime in the future. In the meantime just thank God it isn’t you having to do this!