Ruth Frankel Professor Swedberg CAS WS214 May 2, 2013 Carole
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Ruth Frankel Professor Swedberg CAS WS214 May 2, 2013 Carole King: A Consequential Female Artist in Achievement and Message Carole King, a Brooklyn born singersongwriter, most associated with the music of the 1960s and 1970s, is significant in that she, according to her biographer James Perone, “almost singlehandedly opened the doors of popular music songwriting to women” (1). She also became the first female artist in American popular music in complete control of her own work. Her writing was prolific. She has written 500 copyrighted songs throughout her career and has had tremendous commercial success (Havranek 236). King’s greatest success was the release of the 1973 album Tapestry, which remained on the charts for 302 weeks (Perone 6). Though her cultural impact is often underappreciated, Carole King has been an important contributor to advancement of women in the music industry and a positive role model to the female audiences of her generation. It is even hard to find academic sources reflecting the success and cultural attributions of King. Overall, it appears that sexism has faded the memory of Carole King’s contribution to women in music. Again and again, King impact has not been recognized or remembered. For example, in the book Go, Girl, Go!: The Women’s Revolution in Music by James Dickerson, King’s name is mentioned only once. Dickerson writes, “Carly Simon and Carole King were the two most successful singersongwriters of the decade, and of the two, it was Carly who was dazzling the world with her toothy smile and sexy album covers” (77). Curiously enough, the author continues to discuss Simon’s sex appeal for several pages, but never returns to speak of the other “most successful singersongwriter of the decade.” However, it is because King has not relied on sex appeal, and embraced her natural self, with her loose naturally curly hair, loose, comfortable clothing and lack of makeup. King and her work have contributed a great deal to females in music and to her audience by finding huge success in embracing her natural self. Throughout her career, King has remained relevant by continuing to be herself. For example, In the 2000s she was able to stay current, by choosing to release her music independently (Havranek). The Living Room Tour (2005) is a collection of small, intimate live performances recorded throughout her career. The album debuted at 17 on the Billboard 200 (Perone). In considering King’s success in embracing her natural self, her granola style, King’s development into a positive female role model must be charted. It is disconcerting to consider that King, who in retrospect has proven to be a positive rolemodel for young females, wrote the music, as part of her duo with her first husband, Gerry Goffin, for a song that seems to accept domestic violence. “He Hit Me (and It Felt Like A Kiss)” was written by King and Goffin in 1962 for The Crystals, a black girl group. The lyrics portray a woman, the singer, accepting physical abuse as a sign of love. She sings, “He hit me and I knew he loved me/ If he didn't care for me/ I could have never made him mad/ But he hit me and I was glad.” In the early part of the pairing, Goffin was almost totally responsible for lyrics while King wrote the music. Perhaps this unsettling work can be better understood through the explanation Jacqueline Warwick gave in her book Girl Groups, Girl Culture: Popular Music and Identity in the 1960s. She wrote, “it is tempting particularly in light of her post60s career as selfassured, independent earth mother to consider that King was trying to problematize ‘He Hit Me’s’ words with deliberately ugly, 1 unsettling sounds and harmonies” (Warwick 70). Whatever King’s intentions, the song was a flop, and because of its theme, generally not accepted by the public. It is almost shocking to think that King is credited with writing music for this song, since throughout the rest of her career she created music that was empowering for women. However the song does provide a certain perspective that will be important in gaging how the artist grew to provide an powerful representation of women, especially women in music. Carole King and Gerry Goffin met as students at Queens College, but soon dropped out when King became pregnant with the couple’s first child (Perone 1). The two married and began careers writing music together. Their works were commercial and easy to listen to. The duo contributed to the “Brill Building Sound” of the 1960s named after the building in Manhattan where many husband and wife songwriting teams worked (Havranek 235). King and Goffin wrote music for many girl groups and female singers. However in general the music did differ from what was commercially recorded in the past (and certainly the very passive lyrics of “He Hit Me”). According to Carrie Havranek, author of Women Icons of Popular Music: Rebels, Rockers, and Renegades, “Some musicologist have said that in general, the Brill Building songs tend to favor an ‘assertive’ female point of view, one that was more common in blues singers such as Bessie Smith” (240). One of King and Goffin’s greatest successes commercially was also a success in terms of creating a message that was progressive and relatable to woman of the 1960s. “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” became a number one hit for the Shirelles, a black girl’s group, in 1961. The song’s lyrics explore a woman’s concerns involving her sexual freedom as she wonders whether her lover is solely interested in sex or in her as a person. The Shirelles sing, “Tonight you're mine completely/You give your love so sweetly/Tonight the light of love is in your eyes/But will you love me tomorrow?” This theme certainly had not appeared in popular culture prior to this song. It was an important work in that it created a conversation about a modern woman’s dilemma. Though the song certainly had a more modern message, Judy Kutulas, author of "'You Probably Think This Song is About You:' 1970s Women's Music from Carole King to the Disco Divas," argues that it had less authority because it was performed by The Shirelles. Kutulas reminds her readers that “ girl group look also denied women independence or individuality. [...] The girl groups offered a fantasy experience, but one that was clearly rooted in a real world where women were judged by their looks and their behavior and were not encouraged to stand out, hog the spotlight, or act independently of men [...] Women remained the object more than the subject of popular music”(176177). Therefore, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” became more meaningful when King became a soloartist and performed the song on the album Tapestry in 1971. King was not interested in glamour and her natural aesthetic allowed her to relate to her female fans far more than a girl group could. Prior to Tapestry, her most successful work, King had already made strides for women in the music industry. In 1962 she became the first woman in popular American music to be credited for composing, arranging and conducting an album (the Little Eva album The Locomotion, which she cowrote with Gerry Goffin). However, later in the 1960s King’s contributions to the work became greater. She was not receiving the due credit. Though Gerry Goffin and Carole King worked as a team and both were essential members, Goffin took credit as the producer and was paid more than his wife. In her 2012 memoir, A Natural Woman, King reflected, “Clearly I could have benefited from the women’s liberation movement. But women’s 2 lib didn’t come into its own until later in the 1960s. I had no trouble valuing Gerry, but I didn’t know how to value myself. And yet, as much as I valued Gerry, it would turn out not to be enough” (105).Of, course King did learn to value herself. She left Goffin in the late 1968 and moved to Laurel Canyon to pursue a solocareer (Havranek 241) Tapestry (1971), recorded after King moved to LA, became one of the first albums that King lent her voice. The work met incredible success overall. It ranked number one in 1971 on the Billboard 200 and remained on the charts for four years. It was a great cultural accomplishment because Carole King was the first female artist to have achieved this much success. According to Carrie Havranek, the album “was a significant feminist achievement not necessarily for its content per se but because King wrote, sung, arranged, played, and controlled her own musical product” (234). King became the first woman in American popular music who could boast these credits (Havranek 234). Tapestry was the bestselling pop album ever recorded (though the record has since been broken) and remained the top selling solo album by a female for over 25 years (Perone 6). However, Tapestry’s message was equally as important as its great commercial success.. King unpolished, natural style of performance rung true with her audiences. According to Carrie Havranek, King embodied: A certain kind of loose and unpackaged female perspective. Simply put, Tapestry offered popular culture another kind of woman in rock. Critic Robert Christigau credited her with giving female singers a new culturally acceptable way of expressing themselves in a more unaffected, ‘natural’ way, within the range of a woman’s natural voice. It is almost beside the point that King was not a trained singer and did not have the most technically impressive voice nor did she achieve sex symbol status (236).