Carole King Albums (20)
'The Living Room Tour'
Release Date 7/12/2005
Tracks 21
Label Concord
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What The Critics Say
Carole King has co-written more great songs than almost anyone. On her Living Room Tour of 2004 she ran through some of her favorites, old and new, in a very intimate manner with just her piano or acoustic guitar for accompaniment. (She was also joined by guitarists Rudy Guess and Gary Burr on acoustic guitar and occasional bass and vocals.) The double-disc set The Living Room Tour documents some highlights from various shows and works well as a career retrospective as it touches on both the songs she wrote for others and those she performed herself. There are plenty of songs from Tapestry and her early-'70s albums (including the reworked "Where You Lead I Will Follow," which features her daughter Louise Goffin on vocals), songs from soundtracks ("Lay Down My Life" from the little-seen After Dark, My Sweet, "Now and Forever" from A League of Their Own), and a couple of new compositions (the cute "Welcome to My Living Room" and "Loving You Forever"), too. King was always an idiosyncratic vocalist and she sounds a little ragged around the edges here, more gritty and lived-in than you might remember but certainly not worn out. In fact, the grit adds some emotion and strength to her voice. It definitely adds a new dimension to the versions of songs she and Gerry Goffin wrote way back in the early and mid-'60s like "Pleasant Valley Sunday" and "Chains." Her relaxed takes on these classics are highly entertaining; King sounds like she is having a blast and the audience responds in kind. The medley she does of "Take Good Care of My Baby"/"It Might As Well Rain Until September"/"Go Away Little Girl"/"I'm into Something Good"/"Hey Girl"/"One Fine Day"/"Will You Love Me Tomorrow" is great fun and highly educational -- no, amazing might be a better word. Knowing that those songs only touch the tip of the iceberg as far as classic Goffin/King tunes goes is mind-blowing. Fans of Carole King will be as happy as the audiences at the shows (who quite often join in with King on the choruses of the more familiar tunes) to own this charming collection. ~ Tim Sendra, All Music Guide
'Love Makes the World'
Release Date 9/25/2001
Tracks 12
Label Koch International
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What The Critics Say
Bouncing around smaller indie labels in the '90s after a few failed albums on majors, Carole King rebounded with this self-released 2001 disc on her own Rockingale (an anagram of Carole King and a takeoff on her song "Nightingale") imprint. Although it's not a totally successful return to her past triumphs, the disc is one of her best post-'70s albums and occasionally even rivals her most enduring work. Wisely, King returns here to her strengths of melodic love ballads. While only a few selections match the natural woman charms of Tapestry and Music, King remains in terrific voice. When she keeps the arrangements stripped down, as on the closing "Safe Again" and "This Time," she taps into that N.Y.C. singer/songwriter vein that made her finest albums so memorable. Guest appearances from Babyface, k.d. lang, and Wynton Marsalis are hardly necessary, since King carries the weight of their songs herself. On the downside, Celine Dion's exaggerated influence is far too intrusive on "The Reason," overloading a perfectly good track with the bombastic ballad treatment Dion is recognized for. King sounds stiff and by the time the screaming guitar solo comes in, it's obvious this is not the approach that best suits the singer or her songs. Nor does the rock beat and big hooks of "Monday Without You," a misdirected slice of generic radio rock. The majority of the album fares much better, with King's distinctive piano and heartfelt, often gritty vocals belting out tunes with spare accompaniment. The string quartet on "Uncommon Love" seems organically relaxed and k.d. lang remains appropriately low-key throughout the duet. The yearning of "You Will Find Me There" recalls the simple poetic honesty of "You've Got a Friend" both lyrically and musically. Reprising her '60s hit "Oh No, Not My Baby" -- co-written with Gerry Goffin -- for the second time (she had already interpreted it on 1980's Pearls album) is unnecessary, but the solo piano backing illustrates the song's timeless qualities and fits nicely into this disc's overall flow. Certainly her classiest and most consistent collection since the late '70s, Love Makes the World proves that with a songwriter as accomplished as Carole King, less remains more. ~ Hal Horowitz, All Music Guide
'Carnegie Hall Concert: June 18, 1971'
Release Date 10/29/1996
Tracks 17
Label Epic/Legacy
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What The Critics Say
Carnegie Hall Concert: June 18, 1971 is 17-song set recorded just as Tapestry was topping the charts and making Carole King a superstar. Featuring most of Tapestry and a few songs from Writer and Music this is, in a sense, Carole King unplugged (although that terminology was not yet in use). King performs the first half-dozen songs alone at the piano; bassist Charles Larkey, guitarist Danny "Kootch" Kortchmar, and a string quartet back her (in varying combinations) throughout the rest of the program. Tapestry wasn't exactly a high-wattage affair to begin with, so these rearrangements aren't radical, but they're different enough from the studio versions to merit attention by serious King fans. James Taylor, then at the peak of his own popularity, joins King on vocals for a medley of some of her old Brill Building hits, "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow"/"Some Kind of Wonderful"/"Up on the Roof." ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
In Concert was the first of Carole King's live albums to appear, actually preceding the release of the 1971 Carnegie Hall concert. The two couldn't be more different. Carnegie Hall presents a nervous, unassuming artist on the cusp of stardom. The Carole King of In Concert is a different woman -- an abundantly confident, slick professional, with all the timing, glitz, and glamour of a Las Vegas pro. Sometimes this works -- her mind-boggling collaboration with Slash on "Hold Out for Love" comes up trumps, and the rearranged "Jazzman" betters its studio counterpart. But there are disasters, too -- "Hard Rock Cafe" is a distinctly unwelcome inclusion, and the blandly flawless band plays as if in a recording studio, rather than on-stage. It's no surprise that King's most unforgettable standard -- "You've Got a Friend" -- elicits the warmest crowd response, which might explain why it appears twice, the second time with supporting vocals courtesy of Crosby, Stills & Nash. But find, if you can, the accompanying video that features an amusing Brill Building medley of "One Fine Day," "Take Good Care of My Baby," and "Hey Girl," which are not included on the CD. ~ Charles Donovan, All Music Guide
'Colour of Your Dreams'
Release Date 1/1/1993
Tracks 11
Label Rhythm Safari
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What The Critics Say
The success of "Now And Forever," which was used as the opening credits music for the summer 1992 film hit A League Of Their Own, seems to have earned Carole King another shot at record-making, albeit with an indie label. That song turns out to be one of the few highlights of a varied collection in which King sings some love songs and then turns to more serious fare, with dubious results. In "Tears Falling Down On Me," she flails helplessly against generalized injustice. "If I could," she notes, "I'd change the course of history." Wouldn't we all? "Friday's Tie-Dye Nightmare," meanwhile, is an attempt at the kind of funny, frightening song Bob Dylan made a specialty of in the mid-1960s, but it only succeeds in proving that Carole King is no Bob Dylan. The best new songs here are two that reunite King with old partner Gerry Goffin, who still has a way with a romantic lyric. Which leaves us with only one question: Why does a girl from Brooklyn use the British spelling of "colour"? ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Carole King's first album in six years also marks her return to Capitol Records, for whom she recorded from 1977 to 1980. She tries updating her sound, with aggressive guitars played on a couple of cuts by Eric Clapton, synthesizers, and drum machines, while singing lyrics that declare her renewed passion and hope. King was never one of pop's deep thinkers, which got her into trouble when she started going cosmic in the late '70s, but here she restricts herself to a kind of willed optimism and determination, and she sings as though she means it. City Streets is thus King's most engaging record since her early '70s hits, and even if it's too late for her to reclaim her place in pop music, that's encouraging. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Carole King was reunited with Lou Adler -- the man responsible for her legendary Ode albums, including Tapestry and Music -- for this disappointing experiment in digital sound and synthesizers. If there's one artist utterly at odds with state-of-the-art technology, it's Carole King. The charm of her best albums was that they sounded like demos, and her performances never needed clever sonic trickery or up-to-the-minute studio wizardry in order to be good. Dragging her forcibly into the '80s was not the brightest of Adler's ideas. The result is ten songs, all adequate, some fine, struggling to overcome totally unsympathetic arrangements. "Computer Eyes" is a case in point; an engaging midtempo break-up song, choked half to death by pointless, frantically sped-up synthesizer arpeggios. "Crying in the Rain," originally recorded by the Everly Brothers, is given a similarly stultifying synth makeover. "Alabaster Lady" allows King to get back behind an acoustic piano (at least for a minute or two), and in doing so, provides this album's moment of magic. ~ Charles Donovan, All Music Guide
'Pearls: Songs of Goffin and King'
Release Date 1/1/1982
Tracks 10
Label Fame
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What The Critics Say
Dan Heilman wrote "On Pearls King reprises the early-'60s pop gems she wrote with Gerry Goffin, with fine results." There is just a fraction of their phenomenal work documented here, and the 16 and a half minutes per side on the vinyl LP is hardly enough time to give the listener a proper perspective. "Dancin with Tears in My Eyes" opens the collection, a pleasant new addition to their repertoire, but next to "The Loco-Motion," "One Fine Day," "Chains," and "Snow Queen," its purpose is more to bring the album full circle than to try to compete with these classics. "One Fine Day," the song the Chiffons brought Top Five, was the hit, going Top 15 from this set 17 years later. Make no mistake about it, this is possibly Carole King's most important work since Tapestry, and why a similar album didn't follow Tapestry or its follow-up, Music, was a marketing blunder and a mystery. Missing here is Lou Adler's production, though King and her co-producer, Mark Hallman, are hardly inefficient. It's just that some songs get more attention than others. The reworking of the Freddie Scott-Bobby Vee-Donny Osmond hit "Hey Girl" is breathtaking. Here King is backed by lush production and a bluesy vocal that surpasses anything else on this record, as well as much of what was on the charts at this time. Without changing gender, King's performance is a showstopper. Her friend Neil Sedaka employs the same technique when he puts "Where the Boys Are" in his live sets, and both singer/songwriters take their original compositions to new heights. "Chains," however, the song covered by both the Cookies and the Beatles, needed a bit more of what they gave to "Oh No, Not My Baby" -- a bigger sound. Pearls: Songs of Goffin and King is the set the artist's longtime fans craved when Tapestry made her more than a household name. On her Writer album, pre-Tapestry, she gave listeners "Up on the Roof"; with Music, the Tapestry follow-up, listeners got "Some Kind of Wonderful"; and on her pre-solo work with the City, the Lou Adler-produced Now That Everything's Been Said, there were three familiar tunes that are re-recorded for Pearls, those being the Blood, Sweat & Tears hit "That Old Sweet Roll (Hi-De-Ho)," "I Wasn't Born to Follow," which the Byrds covered, and "Snow Queen," which Blood, Sweat & Tears, the Tokens, and the Association all recorded. Both songwriters, Goffin with his excellent It Ain't Exactly Entertainment, and King with just about every album she made between Tapestry and Pearls, refused to capitalize on their earlier efforts. They, and their fans, are not the better for it. From 1962's "It Might as Well Rain Until September," King's first hit, to the Monkees' "Pleasant Valley Sunday," hearing a superstar sing her original songs that fans know and love is something very important. Her version of "Oh No, Not My Baby" is right up there with the classics by Rod Stewart and Maxine Brown, and at the risk of being redundant, it must be said again: this album deserves its place right next to Tapestry. ~ Joe Viglione, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
No Carole King album could ever be called bad -- she's simply not capable of turning in songs that are anything less than melodic and expertly crafted & structured. One to One, however, found her in non-experimental mode. Past albums had explored country (Touch the Sky), R&B (Fantasy), and nostalgia (Pearls). But One to One was straight-up, no-frills singer/songwriter fare, close in spirit to Tapestry but without that album's iconic status. The production has the easy, unchallenging mid-'70s feel of Simple Things, and the personnel supporting King here is largely the same. The title track is collaboration with Cynthia Weill -- it's a catchy, candyfloss concoction, and something you imagine two songwriters of such stature could well have written in their sleep. King's lyrics have never been the most celebrated part of her writing, and she's not trying to reinvent herself here, either. But anyone won over by King's Capitol recordings (most of which failed commercially) will certainly enjoy the typically warm-hearted, altruistic fare presented here, particularly "Little Prince," "Golden Man," and the toe-tapping, Brill Building throwback "Read Between the Lines." ~ Charles Donovan, All Music Guide
