Search - Carole King :: Rhymes & Reasons

Pleasant listening but not a great Carole King album

Lawrance M. Bernabo | The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota | 05/02/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

""Rhymes & Reasons" was released in November of 1972, a year after Carole King had her monumental success with "Tapestry." In between came "Music," and while neither of them was "Tapestry," they are both solid albums and did pretty well. "Music" also made it to #1 on the Billboard album chart and "Rhymes & Reasons" made it to #2. Of course, together the their sales did not equal the success of "Tapestry." Not to belabor the point, but I think my rating would have been the same whether or not "Tapestry" was around to force an inevitable comparison, but the album would probably be more enjoyable.



On this album King only uses one of the songs she co-wrote with Gerry Goffin ("Ferguson Road"), her partner (and husband at one point) in what remains one of the premier songwriting teams in music with songs like "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" and "(You Make Me Feel) Like a Natural Woman." Not only are there almost exclusively new songs on the album, the first four were written with a new partner, Toni Stern: "Come Down Easy," "My My She Cries," "Peace in the Valley," and "Feeling Sad Tonight." "Been to Canaan" was the biggest success on the album, making it to #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart but only #24 overall, and the next best song on the album is "The First Day in August," which was co-written with Charles Larkey. Everything else on the album was written by King alone and if the results are not as compelling as what she had been pulling from her back catalog they are still pretty good easy listening music for rock and roll fans.



The result is a dozen songs and a bit more than 35 minutes of music, which is a good reason to look for the CD version that has both "Writer" (the album before "Tapestry") and "Rhymes & Reasons" on it. Those are the least impressive pair of albums from King's first five, but even when she is not great she is still pretty good and there are few things she has written that are not worth listening to at least once."