Carpenters tunes

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The most popular act of the 70s!

Brother and Sister Karen and Richard Carpenter started out in music early on. Richard on the Piano and Karen eventually on Vocals but her road to becoming a singer was a long and complicated one.

At first, Karen started out playing the Glockenspiel, which she hated, but eventually turned to drums, she thought she found her calling. She would soon be seen practicing rudiments and press rolls for hours on end, and Karen was seemingly set on becoming a professional drummer.

It is Karen playing drums on the Carpenters’ recordings but the singing is what made her and the Carpenters world famous.

Their biggest tunes include (They Long To Be) Close To You, Top Of The World, Rainy Days And Mondays, We’ve Only Just Begun, and Please Mr. Postman, the old Supremes hit.

Carpenters rise and fall

After a few failed attempts at the charts, the act finally got picked up by A&M Records who only took a year to release Burt Bacharach‘s Close To You. This release instantly brought the Carpenters worldwide fame.

For the next five years, the Carpenters toured heavily, sometimes performing over 200 shows in a year. As all seemed well, a tired Karen slipped into depression and at the time unknown illness Anorexia Nervosa.

As Karen was struggling with her eating disorder, the band continued to tour and promote their music heavily. Ultimately this led Karen to collapse at their parent’s house in Downey.

As Richard arrived the next morning Karen had suffered Cardiac Arrest following the eating disorder and sadly passed away at only 32 years old.

Following Karen’s death, much more is known about Anorexia and several celebrities have since come forward about their problems with both Anorexia and Bulimia, possibly most famously Diana, Princess of Wales.