FILTER BOOKS
It’s Yesterday Once More
Sylvie Simmons hails a new examination of the life and art of the late Carpenters singer.
She’d only just begun: Karen Carpenter, 1974.
Lead Sister: The Karen Carpenter Story
★★★★
Lucy O’Brien
NINE EIGHT. £22
FORTY YEARS after her death comes a new book about the singer with the warm, calm contralto Macca once called “the best female voice in the world”. As half of sibling duo The Carpenters, she had a hugely successful career – 100,000,000 records sold worldwide – and a very short life, effectively starving to death aged 32. Karen Carpenter’s life story has been told a number of times in documentaries, TV movies and filmmaker Todd Haynes’ cult classic Superstar, where Barbie dolls take the place of actors. O’Brien herself wrote an essay in her study of women in the music business, She Bop II. O’Brien is an academic and feminist but also a musician and long-time MOJO journalist, and it’s these four approaches that add up to a comprehensive picture.