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.

While the tracks can stand on their own, when taken in succession, they have an added depth and formed a memorable whole. Interwoven between more intros,interludes and almostr jazzy instrumentals such as "Welfare Symphony" are down and out funk such as "You've Been Around Too Long" and the story song "Haywood",both weaving personal tales loosely interelating with themes of everyone in an inner city area in with sweet,string drenched,horn soaked grooves right out of the Curtis Mayfield style school. 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 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.This pressing sounds fine, King's piano has fullness and warmth, vocals and instruments are clear and well separated, resulting in an open, spacious soundstage.

Apparently, Carole King has forgotten that they are, and no amount of well-meaning altruism can make up the difference. The album is more RnB as Carole has ever been and is very experimental from Caroles previous albums. At the time of its release, it only reached number six on the US Billboard 200 album chart, but has remained highly regarded by her fans over the ensuing decades. You can, in many ways, trace the idea of brill-building pop music as romantic artistic expression back to Ms. What, in heaven’s name, should be the difference between Carole King’s “soul” and her “real-life role”?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. Directions” could just as easily be a bow to feminism as to black consciousness, its message being a catchall for malcontents: “Oooh, what does it get you/Stealing somebody else’s pride/How much longer must I cry. In five cuts, Carole King “fantasizes” an ethnic persona, for which she has single-handedly provided the most tepid, tokenistic “soul” backgrounds imaginable. All in all, it would be pretty hard to argue that this is anything other than more decent pop product from King Carole. Subsequently we are treated alternately to a series of dramatic monologues, in some of which Carole King appears as herself, voicing personal hope and aspiration, but the majority featuring her as someone else, black, Latin American or otherwise, voicing the same sentiments.

While several of the tracks went in different directions, such as “Being At War With Each Other” and “Welfare Symphony,” even they had a calm and peaceful feel to them. Moving beyond the spare arrangements of its predecessors, for Fantasy Carole scored brass and string arrangements and experimented with Latin and funk styles.It's hard to judge where this falls in the Carole King discography in terms of critical and fan reaction since both things seem to begin and end purely at Tapestry, but from my cursory experience, I'll just say that this at least feels like, the lone other time where Carole King consciously tried to make a major album statement to be held up against her one big album. And, I mean, there's unquestionably no Laura Nyro without Carole King--but there's also no Carole King without Laura Nyro, you know? Carole King made it precisely because she didn’t preach, didn’t try to turn a phrase, wasn’t a would-be producer of “art. Elias regarded "Believe" as being the best song on the album, saying that "all of the elements coalesce and might make listeners wish they took the harder sound and well-meaning messages even further, even for the hell of it.

Highlights include "Being At War With Each Other", "A Quiet Place To Live", "Corazon" and "Believe In Humanity". In “That’s How Things Go Down,” she is a pregnant and potentially unwed mother and in “Weekdays” the mythical everyday housewife: “Heaven knows I can always watch the daytime shows/And wonder which story’s mine. It's got the pleasant melancholy and strong melodies that characterize most Carole King albums, but there's an extra dose of grooviness here that, as another reviewer has mentioned, sounds inspired by Marvin Gaye's landmark What's Going On. Fantasy gets my vote as Carole King’s most underrated album, and deserves a lot more accolades than it generally receives.Near the end of the album, Carole presents a beautiful, heartfelt ballad ("You Light Up My Life") and then a rocking Latin number loaded with Carole's signature piano playing ("Corazon"). Orchestration that resembles, but that is vastly inferior to, Burt Bacharach’s productions for Dionne Warwicke is substituted for melody.