The majority of my teenage and young adult years were strongly influenced by The Carpenters. I was a die-hard fan and when "Superstar" was released, I must have listened to it until I warped the record (the single, that is).
Because I was also a musician and songwriter, and because I grew up in Southern California and went to CSULB (the same university that the Carpenters attended), and studied with the same choir and so many other connections, the Carpenters have always loomed large in my life.
When Karen died at the age of 32, I literally could not process it. I thought, "How could someone so young, with the promise of everything possible, die?"
We all learned a lot more about anorexia nervosa than we wanted to, as a result of her death, but it's good that we did, because we could become aware of the signs in others that might have chosen to go down the same tragic path that Karen did.
This documentary does a great job of taking us through Karen's life via some very important people in her orbit: Olivia Newton-John, Carol Burnett, Cubby O'Brien, Suzanne Sommers, and many, many more who knew her, worked with her and/or worked for A&M records. Because I lived through that era, everything these people said rang true. The only person this production could not get was Richard Carpenter, but I feel this documentary was made with the utmost respect and someone must have okayed it, since there were a fair number of recordings (i.e. Telephone messages, interviews, etc.) that had previously not been made public.
I teared up at the end, thinking of the great loss of this musical giant and of all the other amazing songs she would have sung had she lived.
This is not an easy watch, but for fans, it is essential.
If you were a Carpenters fan,
