Why Karen Carpenter Matters
eBook - ePub

Why Karen Carpenter Matters

  1. 106 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Why Karen Carpenter Matters

About this book

A Pitchfork Best Music Book of 2019: A look at what the beloved pop singer meant to fans, written with "nostalgic affection and astute critical thinking" ( Los Angeles Times ). In the '60s and '70s, America's music scene was marked by raucous excess, reflected in the tragic overdoses of young superstars such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. At the same time, the uplifting harmonies and sunny lyrics that propelled Karen Carpenter and her brother, Richard, to international fame belied a different sort of tragedy—the underconsumption that led to Karen's death at age thirty-two from the effects of an eating disorder. In Why Karen Carpenter Matters, Karen Tongson (whose Filipino musician parents named her after the pop icon) interweaves the story of the singer's rise to fame with her own trans-Pacific journey between the Philippines—where imitations of American pop styles flourished—and Karen Carpenter's home ground of Southern California. Tongson reveals why the Carpenters' chart-topping, seemingly whitewashed musical fantasies of "normal love" can now have profound significance for her—as well as for other people of color, LGBT+ communities, and anyone outside the mainstream culture usually associated with Karen Carpenter's legacy. This hybrid of memoir and biography excavates the destructive perfectionism at the root of the Carpenters' sound, while finding the beauty in the singer's all too brief life.

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Yes, you can access Why Karen Carpenter Matters by Karen Tongson in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Media & Performing Arts & Music Biographies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Series Page
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. Contents
  7. Preface
  8. 1. Whiteness and Promises
  9. 2. For All We Know
  10. 3. Long Beach State of Mind
  11. 4. Goodbye to Love
  12. 5. Queer Horizon
  13. 6. Made in America: Karen Carpenters of the Philippines
  14. 7. Now
  15. Acknowledgments
  16. Notes