Hear the isolated vocals of Karen Carpenter on ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’
Karen Carpenter was one hell of a singer. The clarity and dexterity of her vocals are the stuff of legend, but it’s hard to learn from her technique when she’s surrounded by those lush Carptenters arrangments. Here, we’ve bought you a vocals-only recording of ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’, featuring Karen’s lead vocal line and the accompanying harmonies.
The pristine quality of ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ makes much more sense when you realise the song was originally composed for a bank commercial. in 1968, Paul Williams and Roger Nichols were approached by Crocker Bank and asked to write a song that would attract young people and newlyweds to their institution.
Speaking to Songfacts, Williams recalled: “The ad agency called us and said, “Look, we’re going to show a young couple getting married, driving off into the sunset, and it’s going to say, ‘You’ve got a long way to go, we’d like to help you get there to the Crocker Bank.’ And I went, Okay, what rhymes with Crocker? Crocker what? And they said very specifically, “No we don’t want a jingle.” What they asked for is what we would today call a music video. It was going to show a young couple getting married, driving off into the sunset. After the ceremony, the first kiss and all. So Roger and I wrote the song that would play over that.”
The pair ended up writing the first two verses of ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’. They then wrote a second version for the commercial, which became the bridge. They then added the third verse just in case somebody wanted to record it as a pop song.
Remembering how the song fell into The Carpenter’s hands, Williams said: “Richard (Carpenter), I guess, heard me singing it on the TV commercial, and called and asked if there was a complete song. And we went, ‘Well, funny you should ask.’ And if there hadn’t been a complete song, we would have lied and said, ‘Well, of course there is,’ and then sat down and written it.”
The track’s success marked the beginning of William’s career as a songwriter for some of the music industry’s biggest names, including Barbara Streisand. Although it reached just number 28 in the UK charts in 1970, it has since been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for recordings and remains one of the public’s favourite Carpenters songs of all time.
