“I don’t kiss and tell”: The tryst at the heart of Carole King’s 1970 classic
“Something inside has died / And I can’t hide, and I just can’t fake it”, sang Carole King, longing writ large in some ways, and shrouded in secrecy in others.
Despite what her life and career have thrown at her, King is a woman who has worn her heart on her sleeve at all times, but with certain conditions. She has never been one to give away too much, indulge in gossip and massive drama, and has remained with a steadfast focus always on the music. Ultimately, it’s what makes people love her so much.
At the same time, this doesn’t mean that she hasn’t used her songs as a vehicle to express the pain, the joy, and everything in between from the events of her life. Indeed, this is exactly what her sonic and lyrical hallmark has come to live and die by, showing her at her best, and simultaneously, also her worst.
As much as she is hailed a genius with words, it was actually a song of hers that she didn’t pen with her own fair hand that cultivated the biggest extent of gossip and rumours on account of her love life, or more accurately, the woman who seemed to betray her and then write the lyrics of the song.
‘It’s Too Late’ has always been intrinsically linked to James Taylor in this respect, but not particularly so in relation to King herself. Instead, it was the exploits of songwriter Toni Stern that provided the juiciest slice of insight, despite the relationship between the two songsters always being as prolific as it was ambiguous.
When she wrote ‘It’s Too Late’, Stern had just come out of a tangled relationship with Taylor, which he had ultimately broken off amid his yearning for Joni Mitchell. In this sense, you could see how the lyrics, “It used to be so easy living here with you / You were light and breezy and I knew just what to do / Now you look so unhappy, and I feel like a fool”, could resonate.
However, handing that off to the person to whom the man in question was perhaps closest in his professional life was probably a move that many would have been scared to take. King obliged by writing the music and performing it, but that didn’t mean Stern was off the hook with her rather suggestive lyrics.
She was not one to spill the beans, though. “I wrote ‘It’s Too Late’ very fast, in a day,” she later recalled, “I won’t say who ‘It’s Too Late’ is about, I don’t kiss and tell”. Granted, she didn’t officially say the words, but that description effectively tells you everything you ever need to know, regardless of whether the name is explicitly mentioned.
In that sense, King somewhat took the bullet for Stern in getting the feelings of romantic rendezvous and lost love off her chest. In any case, whether she was the words, King was the muse, or anything else they might have tried to cover up, Taylor was the one person who remained inescapably present at the heart of it all.
