Karen Carpenter’s voice hits you like a ray of warm sun that can just as quickly disappear into a dusky cloud of melancholy. If that cloud happens to rain, her voice is also the velvety cloak to shelter you from the drops. In other words, by listening to Karen, you experience a surreal interlacing of dark and light.
This brilliant drummer and singer formed the musical duo Carpenters, along with her brother, Richard. They toured the world throughout the ’70s and sold over 90 million records during their 14-year career together. But sadly, Karen was struggling with persistent feelings of self-reproach and perfectionism that slowly (and literally) ate away at her. Here is the tragic story behind one of the greatest voices of all time.