The songwriter Carole King thought the world ignored: “That’s hard”
If there’s one songwriter from the history of pop music who ought to have more recognition than they tend to get, then Carole King should be one of the first names to spring to mind.
When people think of King, their minds will automatically jump to the release of her classic 1971 album, Tapestry, and while this is an undisputed masterpiece in terms of both its songwriting and performances, there’s far more to her as an artist than just this faultless record released at the height of her career.
Other albums from the same period, such as Writer and Music, are unjustly ignored despite boasting some of the same exemplary songwriting, vocals and piano playing that are heard across Tapestry, and both highlight how she’s far more than just a fine example of a singer-songwriter. What King was capable of doing was weaving emotion and power into her songs, and very few can claim to have the ability to display both so consistently.
It’s not just her solo work that ought to be given recognition, as the early part of her career in the 1960s is also characterised by wondrous displays of songwriting genius, having given many of her best compositions to other artists who had major hits with them.
It goes without saying that if you’re capable of writing a song as good as ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’ at the age of 18, and scoring a number one hit as a result by way of The Shirelles’ performance of the song, then you ought to be destined for greatness, and her subsequent work as a songwriter in the Brill Building should only further highlight this.
However, all of this discussion is missing a crucial fact, which is that she wrote a large portion of her songs from this period alongside her then-husband, Gerry Goffin, because as a lyricist, Goffin worked as the other half of the illustrious partnership while King focused on the compositional side of things, but because Goffin never had a successful career as a performer, he tends to get even more overlooked than King does.
The duo would get their flowers when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame together in 1990 for their contributions to songwriting, and although she would later be recognised as a performer in the Hall in 2021, she noted in an interview with Rolling Stone after her second induction that these are two different things, and that she felt blessed to have been recognised alongside Goffin the first time around.
“It’s a different thing,” King claimed. “When I was inducted with Gerry, I was really happy because we were recognised together. A lot of times, as the singer of the song that Gerry had written the lyrics to, I was often credited, and they might overlook him, and that’s hard when you’re married to them. We were an amazing songwriting team, and I think we made each other better.”
While King has undoubtedly had the more celebrated career due to her spending more time in the spotlight, it is a shame that people tend to forget about the importance of Goffin in her work, and that it was their joint effort that made their songs special, because without each other, they would potentially have never excelled to the same degree, and therefore ought to be recognised jointly, as King understandably puts it.
