The Carpenters, "Sing"

Every year at my daughters' school they put on a big show of different musical skits directed by parent volunteers, and end the show with a big number where all the kids take the stage. This year the finale song is "Sing." Tonight I played both the Sesame Street and Carpenters versions of the song for my daughters and was hit with almost overwhelming waves of emotion.

Sesame Street and The Carpenters were a big part of my early childhood, which was probably the happiest I've been in my life until recently. Back then my parents had about a half dozen cassette tapes, and one of them was The Carpenters' greatest hits. Since I was born in 1975, the music was a little back dated, but I didn't know that disco had crowded early 70s easy listening off of the charts. I knew all the songs front to back, and some were especially meaningful to me. "Sing" was one of those songs, which I also knew from Sesame Street, where it had originated.

It is every bit a product of its time, like the Free To Be Your And Me TV special. The simple, sing-along ways of folk music had blended into soft rock like Bread and The Carpenters, and a little song about how we all should just, well, sing a little song was the kind of meta-level culture people in 1973 craved. It was the ultimate terminus of 60s culture, the good vibes stripped of revolution and fit for housewives popping valium and their little kiddies playing with Lincoln Logs on the shag carpet. The war in Vietnam was lost, the president was a crook, and the price of oil was going through the roof, so just sing a song and forget about it.

The Carpenters and songs like this are easy to mock, but very little in this world can give balm to my soul like the voice of Karen Carpenter. I spent so many countless days at home with my mother and sisters, happy and safe with that voice in the background. That ended when I went to school and confronted a verbally and physically abusive Kindergarten teacher, and then constant bullying from my peers. I would think back to those early days as a kind of Garden of Eden I had been expelled from. Ever since Karen Carpenter's voice will wrap me up in warm memories and sometimes it's too much for me to take.

Even in my youngest days I could pick up the sorrow in her voice in songs like "Rainy Days and Mondays" and "Superstar." The passage of time has only made that sorrow more profound to me. The music also started hitting me harder after seeing the TV movie about Karen Carpenter's life that came out in the late 80s. That's where I learned about her losing battle with anorexia, and that film crushed me harder than just about any I've seen since, no matter how "serious." That night my mom told me that she went to a Carpenters concert years before, and that they barely started performing before Karen had to be taken offstage.

But enough of this sorrow. There's enough that in the world right now. Listen to "Sing" and feel just a little better for three minutes.