I understood my sadness when Elvis Presley and John Lennon died. Along with Bob Dylan, they were my biggest pop heroes in the '50s and '60s. In their best moments, they not only lived up to the standarts that I applied as a critic to pop acts, they defined them. I still listened regularly to their records and I had met them: Presley briefly backstage during one of his Las Vegas engagements and Lennon on several occasions.

But I was unsettled last week by my sadness when I learned about Karen Carpenter's death on Feb. 4. It wasn't just the flash of symphaty that invariably follows someone's death. On a professional level, I try to resist the type of sentimentality that leads you to praise a lot of medicore artists just because they've died. Such praise reduces all artists to a meaningless common denominator. My sense of loss after Karen's death was genuine. The reason I was surprised by the reaction was that I wasn't, as a critic, someone you could even remotely list as a supporter of the Carpenters. So why was I touched?

I dug out some Carpenters albums and listened again. In the process, I began reflecting on the differences between the demands made upon artists by a critic (who examines pop achievement) and regular listeners (who simple want to be entertained).

Critics want artist to challenge traditions so that we can gain insights or be inspired. It isn't enough merely to be handed already familiar emotions and techniques. That's generally why the Carpenters' records were downgraded by critics. Sweet and understated, the music usually lacked the boldness or social examination that critics prize. Except when reviewing their new releases, I rarely played their albums.

After Karen's death, however, I found myself thinking about her voice, even recalling the first time I heard it on the radio in a 1970 version of "Ticket to Ride." Unlike the Beatles' uptempo rendition, this one had the softer, plaintive quality of many a Mamas and Papas ballad.

The attraction for me was the intimacy and warmth of Karen's singing: a strange, but seductive blend of innocence and melancholia. But "Close to You," the record that launched the Carpenters' Top 10 reign later the same year, wasn't nearly as convincing. It had a timid, almost bloodless quality that was all too characteristic of the duo's recordings. After a while, I gave up on them.

But you really couldn't escape the Carpenters' sound because their records were all over the radio dial. Some tunes seemed catchy: the upbeat country tone of "Top of the World" and the lazy disappointment of "Rainy Days and Mondays."

It wasn't until the "Passage" album in 1977, however, that I was really impressed by what Richard and Karen had done. Though it wasn't their biggest seller, the album contained some experimental touches that added refreshing character to their musical foundation.

On the version of "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" from that album, there's a maturity to Karen's vocal that was far beyond anything in the early years. Even the song's lyrics have a chilling quality when considered in light of what we've learned about her in recent days.

I'm referring here to the move from a Southern California sheltered life to New York, where she battled for independence while struggling against post-marriage depression and anorexia nervosa, the dieting compulsion that caused her drop her normal 110-pound range to less than 85 pounds. Sample lines: And as for fortune and as for fame/I never invited them in/Though it seemed to the world they were all I desired/They are illusions/They're not the solutions they promised to be/The answer was here all the time.

But that's not the song pointed out last weekend by John Bettis, who co-wrote many of the Carpenters' hits. When asked which of Karen's vocals was the most personal, he mentioned "I Need to Be in Love," a modest hit from 1976. He said it was written at a time when the Carpenters were established as one of the biggest-selling pop groups ever, but that he and Richard and Karen all felt an emptiness. The words he wrote for her: I know I ask perfection of /A quite imperfect world/ and (I'm ) fool enough to think that's what I'll find.

On these records, her voice conveys a heart warming cry for understanding and love, a cry that strucks a chord in millions of listeners who were unburdened by any sense of critical responsibility. Though the moment didn't invalidate for me the need to seek out artists who challenge tradition an redirect our thinking, it did remind me that purity of emotion also is powerful.

Karen's voice may not have challenged pop tradition the way the critic would have preferred, but the loveliness of her best vocals did enrich us. The loss is real. It's also instructive. The heart of pop music is emotion and you can never measure emotion by critical standards alone.

LOS ANGELES TIMES
February 13th, 1983
USA