Carole King

• 1. Introduction

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  Carole King wrote or co-wrote 118 songs that reached the Billboard Hot 100 during the second half of the 20th century. Another 61 of her songs reached the UK charts. From 1962 to 2005, no woman had more success as a songwriter on the UK singles charts. She has also sold more than 75 million records worldwide, many of them under her own name. That raises odd questions for a songwriter who spent years handing her best work to other voices. How does a girl from Brooklyn end up with that many hits? Why did she step away from performing, and what brought her back to the front of the stage? And what happens when a writer of songs becomes the subject of a film and a Broadway show?

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• 2. Absolute Pitch

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  In 1936, a chemistry major and an English and drama major met in an elevator at Brooklyn College. They were Sidney Klein and Eugenia Cammer, and they married in 1937, during the last years of the Great Depression. Eugenia left college to run the household. Sidney quit too, tried a short stint as a radio announcer, and then chose the steadier work of a firefighter. Their daughter, Carol Joan Klein, was born in Manhattan on the 9th of February 1942. The family settled in Brooklyn and eventually bought a small two-story duplex, renting out the upstairs for income.

  By the age of three, the girl had an insatiable curiosity about music. Her mother had learned piano as a child, and she began teaching her daughter the basics without formal lessons. At four, her parents discovered that she had absolute pitch, meaning she could name a note correctly just by hearing it. Her father loved to show off the trick to visiting friends. Years later she remembered his delight: "My dad's smile was so broad that it encompassed the lower half of his face. I enjoyed making my father happy and getting the notes right."

  Real lessons began that same year, with the child climbing onto a piano stool made higher still by a phone book. Her mother sat beside her and taught music theory, how to read notation, and how to keep proper time. Practice never needed enforcing. In King's words: "My mother never forced me to practice. She didn't have to. I wanted so much to master the popular songs that poured out of the radio."

  Kindergarten also began at four, and after that first year she was promoted straight to second grade for her quick grasp of words and numbers. In the 1950s she attended James Madison High School in the Midwood section of Brooklyn. There she formed a band called the Co-Sines and changed her name from Carol Klein to Carole King. With her friend Paul Simon, she made demo records for $25 a session. In 1958, ABC-Paramount released her first official recording, a promotional single called "The Right Girl". She wrote it and sang it to an arrangement by Don Costa. Her real turning point was still a year away, and it would come from a former boyfriend's record.

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• 3. Brill Building Years

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  In August 1959, at the age of 17, King married Gerry Goffin in a Jewish ceremony on Long Island. The two had met at Queens College, and King was pregnant with her first daughter, Louise. The couple quit college and took day jobs, Goffin as an assistant chemist and King as a secretary. In the evenings, they wrote songs together.

  Later in 1959, Neil Sedaka took "Oh! Carol" into the top ten. He was King's ex-boyfriend from high school, and he had named the song after her. The success convinced King that songwriting could be a real career. With Sedaka's endorsement, she and Goffin joined the staff at Aldon Music. Goffin soon wrote a playful answer song, "Oh! Neil", which King recorded as a single that same year. It was not a success. Its B-side was another Goffin-King song, "A Very Special Boy".

  The Shirelles recorded "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" in 1960, and it reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart. It was the first No. 1 by a black girl group. Goffin and King gave up their daytime jobs to write full time, and the song became a pop standard.

  Through the 1960s, King composed the music and Goffin wrote the lyrics. They became the songwriting team behind Don Kirshner's Dimension Records. Its catalogue included "Chains", later recorded by the Everly Brothers and the Beatles. It also included "The Loco-Motion" and "Keep Your Hands off My Baby", both sung by their babysitter, Little Eva. In 1962, King recorded "It Might as Well Rain Until September" herself. It reached 22 in the US and 3 in the UK, where it remains her greatest hit. Follow-up singles charted poorly, and by 1966 her recording career had been abandoned, though only for a time.

  In February 1962, the Everly Brothers took "Crying in the Rain" to number six on the Hot 100. Tony Orlando had "Half Way To Paradise", which Billy Fury recorded in the UK. Bobby Vee sang "Take Good Care of My Baby", the Drifters had "Up on the Roof", and the Chiffons had "One Fine Day". Earl-Jean recorded "I'm into Something Good", which Herman's Hermits later took up. The Monkees received "Pleasant Valley Sunday", inspired by their move to suburban West Orange, New Jersey. Aretha Franklin recorded "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman". Dusty Springfield sang several of the duo's songs, including "Goin' Back" and "Some of Your Lovin'".

  The pair wrote at 1650 Broadway, alongside other songwriters associated with the Brill Building Sound. By 1968, however, the partnership had ended in divorce.

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• 4. Laurel Canyon to Tapestry

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  In 1968, King moved to Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles with her two daughters. There she reactivated her recording career by forming a trio called The City. Its members were bassist Charles Larkey, her future husband, and Danny Kortchmar on guitar and vocals, with King on piano and vocals.

  The City made one album, Now That Everything's Been Said, in 1968. King's reluctance to perform live limited promotion and sales, and a change of distributors meant the record was quickly deleted. The group disbanded in 1969. Classic Rock radio rediscovered the album in the early 1980s, and the track "Snow Queen" got modest airplay. Cleveland's WMMS played it every few weeks between 1981 and 1985. The long-out-of-print LP became sought after by fans who liked its edgy sound.

  Laurel Canyon also put King among James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and Toni Stern, with whom she collaborated. In 1970, she released her debut solo album, Writer, on Lou Adler's Ode label. Taylor played acoustic guitar and sang backing vocals. The album peaked at No. 84 on the Billboard Top 200. That year she also played keyboard on B.B. King's album Indianola Mississippi Seeds.

  Tapestry followed in 1971. It carried new songs alongside fresh versions of "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman". It was recorded alongside Taylor's Mud Slide Slim, with an overlapping group of musicians that included Kortchmar and Mitchell. Both albums contained "You've Got a Friend", which became a No. 1 hit for Taylor. In a 1972 interview, King said 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".

  Fifteen consecutive weeks at the top of the albums chart was only part of Tapestry's run. It stayed on the chart for nearly six years and has sold over 30 million copies worldwide. "It's Too Late", with lyrics by Toni Stern, gave King a Billboard No. 1. The album won four Grammy Awards: Album of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Performance (Female), Record of the Year for "It's Too Late", and Song of the Year for "You've Got a Friend". King was the first woman to win Song of the Year. Rolling Stone magazine later placed Tapestry at No. 36 on its list of the 500 greatest albums. It ranked "It's Too Late" at No. 469 among the 500 greatest songs.

  In December 1971 came a second album, Carole King: Music, certified gold on the 9th of December. It entered the top ten at No. 8, and it and Tapestry sat together in the top ten for many weeks. The single "Sweet Seasons" reached number 9 in the US. Music stayed on the Billboard pop album charts for 44 weeks and was eventually certified platinum.

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• 5. After the Peak

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  Rhymes and Reasons arrived in 1972 and Fantasy in 1973, and each earned a gold certification. "Been to Canaan" from the first reached number 24 in the US and number one on the Adult Contemporary chart. Fantasy produced "Believe in Humanity" at 28 and "Corazon" at 37. It also gave her another Hot 100 entry, "You Light Up My Life", at 67.

  On Saturday the 26th of May 1973, King played a free concert in New York City's Central Park for at least 100,000 people. It was recorded for the film Carole King: Home Again - Live in Central Park.

  Wrap Around Joy appeared in September 1974 and was certified gold on the 16th of October. Three days later it entered the top ten at No. 7. Two weeks after that, it became King's third album to reach No. 1. The single "Jazzman" peaked at No. 2 on the 9th of November, and "Nightingale" peaked at No. 9 on the 1st of March 1975.

  In 1975, King scored and recorded songs for Really Rosie, an animated children's television production based on the work of Maurice Sendak. Sendak wrote the lyrics, and the songs were released as an album of the same name. She was also the speaking and singing voice of the title character. That year she appeared on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, credited under her married name, Carole Larkey.

  Thoroughbred, in 1976, was the last studio album she released on the Ode label. Friends including David Crosby, Graham Nash, James Taylor and Waddy Wachtel joined her, and she reunited with Goffin to write four songs. Their partnership continued intermittently. Bruce Springsteen had covered "Goin' Back" at two of his Roxy gigs on the 17th and the 18th of October 1975. On the 7th of March 1976, he turned up at the Beacon Theatre in New York City to sing "The Loco-Motion" with King as the night's final encore.

  In 1977, King collaborated with the songwriter Rick Evers on Simple Things, the first release on a new label distributed by Capitol Records. Shortly afterward they married. Simple Things was her first album since Tapestry that failed to reach the top ten. Apart from the compilation Her Greatest Hits in 1978 and Live at the Troubadour in 2010, it was her last gold record from the RIAA. Rolling Stone magazine nonetheless named it "The Worst Album of 1977".

  In her 2012 memoir, King wrote that Evers physically abused her on a regular basis. He died of a cocaine overdose in 1978, days after they separated, while King and her daughter Sherry were in Hawaii. King has been married four times, to Gerry Goffin, Charles Larkey, Rick Evers and Rick Sorenson. Her children are musicians Louise Goffin and Sherry Goffin Kondor, artist Molly Larkey, and Levi Larkey.

  Welcome Home, in 1978, was her first album as a co-producer, and neither it nor Touch the Sky in 1979 entered the Billboard 100. Then Pearls - The Songs of Goffin and King, in 1980, brought back a hit single with an updated "One Fine Day".

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• 6. Many Stages

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  Atlantic Records released One to One in 1982 and Speeding Time in 1983, the latter a reunion with Tapestry-era producer Lou Adler. After a well-received tour in 1984, Catherine Foster of The Christian Science Monitor dubbed King "a Queen of Rock". Foster also called her performance "all spunk and exuberance." That same year, King starred in an episode of Faerie Tale Theatre, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, alongside Tatum O'Neal, Hoyt Axton, Alex Karras and John Lithgow.

  In 1985, King wrote and performed "Care-A-Lot", the theme to The Care Bears Movie, and also wrote and performed "Home Is In Your Heart". That year she scored and performed, with David Sanborn, the soundtrack to Martin Ritt's film Murphy's Romance. Adler produced again, and the songs included "Running Lonely" and "Love For The Last Time (Theme from 'Murphy's Romance')". A soundtrack album apparently never came out officially. King made a cameo in the film as Tillie, a town hall employee.

  In 1988, she starred in the off-Broadway production A Minor Incident. The next year she returned to Capitol Records and recorded City Streets, with Eric Clapton on two tracks and Branford Marsalis on one. Her song "Now and Forever" opened the 1992 film A League of Their Own and earned a Grammy nomination. Colour of Your Dreams followed in 1993, with an appearance by Slash.

  In 1994, King played Mrs. Johnstone on Broadway in Blood Brothers. In 1996, she appeared in Brighton Beach Memoirs in Ireland, directed by Peter Sheridan. The following year, she wrote "The Reason" for Celine Dion's album Let's Talk About Love and sang backing vocals on it. The two performed a duet on the first VH1 Divas Live benefit concert. King also sang "You've Got a Friend" with Dion, Gloria Estefan and Shania Twain. She joined Aretha Franklin and others, including Mariah Carey, for "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman". In 1998, she wrote and performed "Anyone at All" for the film You've Got Mail, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.

  In 2000, King was asked to record her song "Where You Lead" as the theme for the show Gilmore Girls. She rewrote a few lyrics to fit the show's mother-daughter story, and she often performs it with her daughter Louise Goffin. After its original release she had rarely performed it, because the rise of the women's liberation movement had left the sentiment of its lyrics out of favor. She agreed to revamp it into "something more relevant". The song became strongly associated with female friendships and family members. King also made three guest appearances on the series as Sophie, the owner of the Stars Hollow music store. She reprised the role in the 2016 Netflix revival, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.

  In autumn 2001, King released Love Makes the World on her own label, Rockingale, distributed by Koch Records. The album included songs she wrote for other artists in the mid-1990s and featured Celine Dion, Steven Tyler, Babyface and k.d. lang. It reached 158 in the US and 86 in the UK. An expanded edition six years later added a bonus disc with five tracks, including a remake of "Where You Lead (I Will Follow)" co-written with Toni Stern.

  The same year, King and Stern wrote "Sayonara Dance" for Yuki, the former lead vocalist of the Japanese band Judy and Mary. King also composed a song for Semisonic's All About Chemistry with the band's frontman, Dan Wilson.

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• 7. Tours and Causes

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  In July 2004, King launched her Living Room Tour at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago. That show, along with performances at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles and the Cape Cod Melody Tent in Hyannis, Massachusetts, was recorded for an album released in July 2005. It sold 44,000 copies in its first week in the US and landed at 17 on the Billboard 200, her highest placing since 1977. It has sold 330,000 copies in the United States. The tour also stopped in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and a DVD, Welcome to My Living Room, followed in October 2007.

  On the 29th of July 2004, about two hours before John Kerry accepted the Democratic nomination for president, King made a short speech and sang at the Democratic National Convention. She had begun campaigning for Kerry in 2003, performing in private homes for caucus delegates during the primaries, and she kept backing him through the general election.

  In 2010, King and James Taylor staged their Troubadour Reunion Tour, recalling the first time they played at The Troubadour in West Hollywood in 1970. They had reunited with the band from 1970 to mark the club's 50th anniversary in 2007, and they enjoyed it so much that they took the band on the road. Russ Kunkel, Leland Sklar and Danny Kortchmar played in it. King played piano on Taylor's songs and he played guitar on hers. Ticket sales exceeded 700,000 and the tour grossed over 59 million dollars, making it one of the most successful tours of the year. The album Live at the Troubadour debuted at No. 4 in the US with sales of 78,000 copies. That December, her mother, Eugenia, died in Delray Beach, Florida, aged 94.

  In April 2012, King's autobiography, A Natural Woman: A Memoir, entered The New York Times bestseller list at No. 6. The next month she announced her retirement from music and said the 2010 tour with Taylor was probably the last of her life, calling it "a good way to go out." Later that month she wrote on Facebook that she had never said she was retiring, only taking a break.

  The break did not last. On the 3rd of July 2016, King headlined the British Summer Time Festival in Hyde Park, London, and played all of Tapestry live for the first time. An album of the concert was released in 2017. In October 2018, she released a new version of her song "One", from her 1977 album Simple Things. It was her first new recording since 2011. She rewrote the lyrics as "One (2018)" to reflect her dream for America in the 2018 elections, as "Love won".

  After she relocated to Idaho in 1977, King became involved in environmental issues. Since 1990, she has worked with the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and other groups toward passage of the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act. She has testified on Capitol Hill for the bill three times, in 1994-2007 and 2009.

  On the 18th of March 2008, King appeared on The Colbert Report and said she was supporting Hillary Clinton, a choice she said had nothing to do with gender. She added that she would have no issues if Barack Obama won, and she returned to the stage before the show ended to perform "I Feel the Earth Move". In 2012, she campaigned for Nicole LeFavour of Idaho and for Obama. In June 2013, she campaigned in Massachusetts for Ed Markey in the special Senate election to succeed Kerry. On the 6th of October 2014, she performed at a Democratic fundraiser in Beverly Hills attended by Vice President Joe Biden.

  On the 21st of January 2017, King marched in the Women's March in Stanley, Idaho, carrying a sign that said "One Small Voice." She explained in an op-ed for The Huffington Post: "I've never stopped believing that one small voice plus millions of other small voices is exactly how we change the world." In the 2024 presidential election, she endorsed Kamala Harris.

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• 8. Honors and Echoes

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  In 1987, Goffin and King were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and in 1988 they received the National Academy of Songwriters Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1990, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted them in the non-performer category for her songwriting. In 2002, the Songwriters Hall of Fame gave King its Johnny Mercer Award, and in 2004 the pair received the Grammy Trustees Award. The Long Island Music Hall of Fame inducted her in 2007.

  On the 3rd of December 2012, King received the 2,486th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the 9th of February 2013, she was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In May 2013, Berklee College of Music gave her an honorary doctorate of music.

  On the 21st of May 2013, the Library of Congress hosted an invitation-only concert in her honor at its Coolidge Auditorium. Siedah Garrett, Colbie Caillat, Gian Marco, Shelby Lynne, Patti Austin, Arturo Sandoval and her daughter Louise Goffin performed. The next night, at the White House, James Taylor, Gloria Estefan, Emeli Sandé, Trisha Yearwood, Jesse McCartney and Billy Joel joined her. President Barack Obama presented the fifth Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the first awarded to a woman composer.

  In January 2014, she was honored as MusiCares Person of the Year, and that year she received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. On the 6th of December 2015, the Kennedy Center Honors recognized her lifetime contribution to American culture through the performing arts, with a tribute from Aretha Franklin. In 2021, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted her again, this time as a solo artist.

  The 1995 album Tapestry Revisited: A Tribute to Carole King gathered an all-star roster. Rod Stewart's "So Far Away" and Celine Dion's "A Natural Woman" both became Adult Contemporary hits. Amy Grant sang "It's Too Late", Richard Marx sang "Beautiful", Aretha Franklin took "You've Got a Friend", Faith Hill took "Where You Lead", and the Bee Gees took "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?". In 2010, the former Monkee Micky Dolenz released King for a Day, an album of songs written or co-written by King.

  Many other covers followed. Grand Funk took "Locomotion" to number 1 in 1974. Barbra Streisand had a top 40 hit in 1972 with "Where You Lead". The Carpenters reached number 12 in 1972 with "It's Going to Take Some Time", and Martika reached number 25 in 1989 with "I Feel the Earth Move". Dion's recording of "The Reason" was certified Diamond in France.

  In 1996, Allison Anders wrote and directed Grace of My Heart, a film very loosely based on King's life. In it, an aspiring singer sacrifices her own career to write hits that launch other singers. The film borrows from King's colleagues and the producers of the Brill Building from 1958 to 1964, and from the California music scene from 1965 to 1971.

  Beautiful: The Carole King Musical debuted in pre-Broadway tryouts in San Francisco in September 2013, starring Jessie Mueller in the title role. Broadway previews began on the 21st of November 2013 at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, and the official opening came on the 12th of January 2014. The book is by Douglas McGrath. Reviews were mixed but generally warm. Mueller won the Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical, and Brian Ronan won for Best Sound Design of a Musical. The show ran for six years and 2418 performances on Broadway, keeping songs she once wrote in the evenings after her day job in front of live audiences night after night.

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