Carole King began her career in music as a young newlywed and college graduate, working a 9-to-5 shift alongside her then-husband, Gerry Goffin, in Don Kirshner\u2019s songwriting factory, Aldon Music. It was there, working in a cubicle with a piano, staff paper and tape recorder that she co-wrote her first hit song (the Shirelles\u2019 \u201cWill You Love Me Tomorrow,\u201d 1960), her second and third hit songs (the Drifters\u2019 \u201cSome Kind Of Wonderful\u201d and Bobby Vee\u2019s \u201cTake Good Care Of My Baby,\u201d both 1961), her 14th and 17th hit songs (the Chiffons\u2019 \u201cOne Fine Day,\u201d 1963, and Herman\u2019s Hermits\u2019 \u201cSomething Tells Me I\u2019m Into Something Good,\u201d 1964) and so on and so forth. It was not until 10 years after her songwriting breakthrough, however, that Carole King finally fulfilled her long-held dream of having her own hit record as both singer and songwriter. On June 19, 1971, she earned her first #1 single as a performer with the double-sided hit \u201cIt\u2019s Too Late\/I Feel The Earth Move.\u201d<\/p>\n
King\u2019s hit single came from one of the best and most popular albums of the singer-songwriter era\u2014an era that Carole King helped usher in. Tapestry was a milestone not only for Carole King, but for women in rock and roll in general. As the critic Robert Christgau put it: \u201cKing has done for the female voice what countless singer-composers achieved years ago for the male: liberated it from technical decorum. She insists on being heard as she is\u2026with all the cracks and imperfections that implies.\u201d On the heels of Tapestry\u2018s success, up-and-coming solo female performers like Carly Simon and Rickie Lee Jones found an easier path to popularity, and the great Joni Mitchell entered the period of her greatest commercial success.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The success of Tapestry and Carole King\u2019s first #1 single launched her career as a solo performer, but a look around the pop charts of 1971 reveals just how big a force she remained behind the scenes. Among the artists who earned #1 pop hits that year, Tony Orlando and Dawn, Rod Stewart, Isaac Hayes, George Harrison and Paul McCartney all recorded a Carole King song at one point in their careers, and Donny Osmond and James Taylor owe their only chart-topping 1971 hits (\u201cGo Away Little Girl\u201d and \u201cYou\u2019ve Got A Friend,\u201d respectively) to her songwriting talents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Carole King began her career in music as a young newlywed and college graduate, working a 9-to-5 shift alongside her then-husband, Gerry Goffin, in Don Kirshner\u2019s songwriting factory, Aldon Music. It was there, working in a cubicle with a piano, staff paper and tape recorder that she co-wrote her first hit song (the Shirelles\u2019 \u201cWill […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3506],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}