The best song Carole King gave away
Carole King‘s early career remains one of the most impactful chapters in the whole of music history, even though it didn’t make her a star in the traditional sense.
That’s the pain that the vast majority of songwriters know all too well, seeing the famous faces of tomorrow run off with your precious gems, knowing all the while that you could have been the one to own your work and make it a hit. After having that happen to her too many times to count, eventually there came a point when enough was enough, and King boldly stepped into the spotlight.
At this point, a litany of her songs had already become iconic stalwarts of the pop canon for other artists, often without her receiving much of the credit. Take ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’ by The Shirelles as the prime example. It was their achievement to own, fair and square, but it also represented the greatest ever one that got away for King.
The year was only 1960 – not that this was in any way primitive, but it was worth remembering how the rest of the decade took shape under King’s influence. Motown had only been formed the year before, The Beatles weren’t even properly a thing yet, really, and there King was, blazing a path forward that would define all these iconic aspects of the sonic landscape at once.
The thing that makes it even more incredible is that she wasn’t even a full-time songwriter at the time, despite beginning to shape the music industry in her image. King and Gerry Goffin had quit college, married the year before, and had their daughter Louise all in pretty quick succession. He took a job as a pharmacy assistant, she was a secretary, and they convened to write songs together in the evening.
Hilariously, however, when The Shirelles were first presented with the nascent love song from the husband and wife duo, they weren’t entirely convinced. Lead singer Shirley Owens said it sounded “too country” initially, before the addition of a string arrangement eventually persuaded her. If one thing was certain, she would be damn glad she said yes in the end.
This was because when ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’ went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, it marked the first ever time a girl group had topped the charts, let alone an African-American one. To say this changed the course of music history would be an understatement, and yet still, King wasn’t able to bask in the glory of her creation.
Of course, she finally did get her moment in the sun for the song when she recorded it for Tapestry in 1971. For that version, even though the bones of the track were essentially the same, she created her own imprint by slowing the tempo, creating an air of maturity, and had both Joni Mitchell and James Taylor sing on the backing vocals.
That undoubtedly and formidably made the track her own, but it speaks to a wider condition in music where, whatever praise King receives for her illustrious body of work, it’s never going to be enough. The Shirelles were the catapult, but the next stage was to take on the rest of the world, one iconic song at a time.
