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Fantasy

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Funk and soul were beginning to come into their own as artists from Detroit,Chicago and Memphis began expressing themselves more freely in the creative sense,and taking more control over their music. The high point of the A-side is the wondrous “That’s How Things Go Down,” perhaps Carole’s finest ballad since “So Far Away.

The more ambitious arrangements did have negative repercussions (see Wrap Around Joy), but for this album the string and brass arrangements work; most effectively on “Welfare Symphony,” which is almost the Carole King version of prog rock in the way it develops from a spare vocal/organ track to a full-blown orchestral piece. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Oh, and we've got ~socially conscious~ lyrics on here, but they're socially conscious in that overly earnest early 70s way that has not aged well at all.

Apparently, Carole King has forgotten that they are, and no amount of well-meaning altruism can make up the difference. Presented as a sort of song cycle, the album opens and closes with two versions of the title song and the songs on each side segue directly into one another. If she can make ME feel better about the world situation, then she must know what she's talking about. The main thesis here appears to be "bad things exist, but the best way to create a better world is to just believe in the existence of a better world, in a very abstract way". The technique does not truly hit home until tracks 5 and 6, when such a level of pure melodic bliss is reached that I cannot help but to be utterly bowled over.

We still have the same problems to cope with today, and more, but I still get the same uplifting feeling when I hear this album as I did in 1973. Well, I bring those previous points up because unlike the rest of Carole's discography which even with all the merits contained within has a habit of blending together, Fantasy kind of stands out as a singular statement in a way the albums before and after it don't (excluding Tapestry of course). You Light Up My Life” explored the simple pleasures of love, while “Believe In Humanity” had an upbeat philosophical message.Unusually, this takes the form of a literal fantasia; a steady, safe, stream-of-consciousness flow of moreish MOR. In five cuts, Carole King “fantasizes” an ethnic persona, for which she has single-handedly provided the most tepid, tokenistic “soul” backgrounds imaginable. Only one song, “You Light Up My Life,” shows the luminescent, intimate King sensibility that made Tapestry, Music and Rhymes And Reasons so emotionally satisfying. The flip side of the latter single, "You Light Up My Life" (not the Debby Boone hit), charted separately from its A-side. In “Fantasy End,” the album’s coda, Carole King announces: “Now that I’ve expressed my soul/I’ll step back into my real-life role.

Of course that doesn't mean the ballads aren't soulful;Carole's always were but "Directions","A Quiet Place" and even the softer "Being At War With Each Other" definately have it in abundance. In spite of everything already mentioned, the rest of Carole King's albums hold up well-enough on their own and are probably very overdue for a critical reappraisal. The B-side is captivating in the extreme, with three fine hit singles (“You Light Up My Life,” the Latin funk workout “Corazón” and “Believe in Humanity”) at its core. The soul-styling of “Welfare Symphony” transitions into the string-laden “You Light Up My Life,“ which moves on to the Latin-sounding “Corazon”and then onto the jazzy “Believe In Humanity. The album did go gold, got excellent reviews, went to number 6 a bit of a let down and spawned the hit Believe In Humanity and the minor hit You Light Up My life, not to be mistaken for Debbie Boones massive hit a few years later.At its worst, the Carole King sound can potentially verge on becoming elevator or dentist's office music. You can, in many ways, trace the idea of brill-building pop music as romantic artistic expression back to Ms.

Highlights include "Being At War With Each Other", "A Quiet Place To Live", "Corazon" and "Believe In Humanity". Not inner groove distortion but any time the levels get somewhat loud there especially the vocals break up.It's not stacked with hits the same way Tapestry is, but it also stands out amongst the crowd of lesser albums she made afterwards. In between these “someone else” monologues, Carole King speaks in her Institutional role as humanitarian empathist: “Everyone comes from one father one mother/So why do we complicate our lives so much/By being at war with each other” (“Being at War with Each Other”). It was less commercially successful than her other 1970s hit albums, which was a shame, as it was her more creative one. The whole adds up to a formalized song cycle in which the Carole King Institution issues its summary social and philosophical expression to date — one that eschews melody for orchestration and lyrical spontaneity for generalities — the overall impact being the equivalent of an early Sixties soap opera. The music overshadows the lyrics in many places, which are simpler and more straightforward than in the past.

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