^ Quite agree.   Janis was a more compelling performer but Karen had that voice... one in a million.

musically? hah!!! nah...

Perhaps it feels that way on a prog forum but trust me, in the wide world of rock and pop music outside, Karen and Janis are way more well known, especially if you're talking Bjork or Kate. At least Joni has some pop standard like songs like Both Sides Now or I Don't Know Where I Stand.  

If anything, two connected trends in pop music that have nothing to do with wonderful solo songwriters like Kate Bush or Joni Mitchell have had a greater role in pushing singers like Karen Carpenter or Janis Joplin a little into the background.  

First, the mainstreaming of the concept of a pop diva singing mostly riffs over almost-screamed fifth octave notes (Whitney/Mariah/Celine).  This has become so popular as to be assumed to be the only acceptable or at least the best way to sing in pop music.  The only alternative (and this was the last credible resurgence of a different style in pop music) is Amy Winehouse like contralto mumbling.  Adele sort of bridged both styles but essentially leans towards the Winehouse side of things and Lana Del Rey is very much a Winehouse clone.  All this leaves very little room for Karen Carpenter's soothing and soaring singing within a mid-range (as opposed to going really high) and emphasising textual interpretation and phrasing over technical gymnastics.  It is also thought of as kinda wimpy or too 'feminine' by those who think only flat out belting throughout a song is powerful.  Basically, the range of expressions considered valid for a female pop singer have been narrowed dramatically even whilst the mainstream believes they are leading an epic female emancipation or whatever.  There is none of the diversity you had in the 70s.  

The other which goes hand in hand with the first trend is treating only black-dominated genres and styles as valid.  I have noticed that my Indian-American cousins listen almost exclusively to black artists.  I have never interrogated them about this for fear of stepping on a PC landmine, lol, but it has always struck me as strange coming from a perspective where I just listen to the audio and react instinctively at first and later find out all about the race, nationality or ethnicity of the artist. The few white artists my cousins like tend to appropriate and imitate black genres (Ariana Grande).  As you may well know, outside the safe space of progarchives or other forums where a spectrum of opinions is tolerated without being a mouthpiece for only one side, basically all rock music is just white male supremacy (oh, and also homophobic even though it championed gay artists long before pop).  Janis Joplin is then a gross misfit in this kind of reading of popular music culture.  They can't even...what was this lady doing rocking out with white dudes.  

In this way, both Karen Carpenter and Janis Joplin don't fit into certain narratives that 'liberal' media seeks to champion about music and these narratives in turn completely ignore how powerful an example these two ladies set by blazing a trail for many female artists to come.  I am sure if you ask actual female musicians and singers, they would have a very different take about the two and would whole heartedly extol their example but that, apparently, is not what we're supposed to do.  Thankfully, because the two are women, the media can't go after them and attack them but they do seem to find it uncomfortable as to what exactly they are supposed to do with them and would prefer to spin them as 'cautionary' tales (nevermind that the same could likewise be said of Whitney or Amy Winehouse too). 

 

Speaking of pop as well in particular, but not exclusively in that realm, one of the things that has remained for female artists is the preference that they possess physical beauty (not unheard of for male artists, either, but more likely to get away with it, if they are not so blessed).  In Janis' and Karen's cases, Janis often mourned that she wasn't "prettier," in her interviews and Karen went so far as to commit slow suicide to try and attain "beauty," and perfection.  

Nice to see a thoughtful thread on classic female vocalists.

Another woman who deserves much praise imo is Linda Ronstadt. I'm doing a deep dive now through her 28 studio albums, and I feel like a fool for not paying more attention sooner. She is an amazing vocalist with great musical instincts, and her albums are, at different times, diverse, fun, moving, surprising.

This was particularly saddening in Karen Carpenter's case (given it drove her to anorexia) because she wasn't even ugly by any yardstick.  She was just being held up against a very unrealistic and narrow minded idea of physical beauty. And speaking of, a common criticism of her solo album is her singing sounded 'sexless'.  Eh, she had had a fair few affairs by the time she recorded the album, so why did these critics assume she knew nothing about sex?  Or did they mean they wanted to hear that particular oooh aaah kind of sound in her singing when she sang disco and wouldn't respect her attempt to preserve her own style and identity even as she ventured out of her comfort zone?  The entire saga around her solo album is shocking and more so for how easily the fans rationalise the decision of A&M.  All these men deciding on her behalf that the album was no good (albeit it has the very poignant If We Try performed very much in the tried and tested Carpenters tradition) and she wouldn't be able to bear the humiliation when it tanked.  Funnily enough, without much promotion, the album, upon being released way late in the 90s, went platinum.  

I have read that book too!  It's brilliant and also devastating to read, unfortunately.  By the way, haven't seen you here in ages!  Howdy?

To be fair, her voice WAS one in a million.  And Phil Collins had to find a work around too once he became Genesis' vocalist so drummers who sing well tend to have a problem of plenty. The more troubling part about the Carpenter saga is Richard and the label insisting she ought to keep her voice always in that low contralto-ish range.  Understand...she wasn't REALLY a contralto.  Her lowest notes aren't much lower, if at all, than a legit soprano like Annie Haslam (OK Annie has mezzo-ish depth low but still...).  That is, Karen Carpenter was a mezzo who was made to sing like a contralto to conform to a certain image.  Richard disliked it when she recorded Don't Cry For Me Argentina but I find nothing wrong with that version.  You can find other versions like Elaine Page where the interpretation is arguably more apt for the material but the insinuation from the Richard camp that the song exposed how weak Karen's high notes were is...I don't even know where that comes from.  Duh, when a woman gets into her head voice, it is going to sound a little different from her chest voice, that's very normal.  And it's not something only women have to do, even a metal God like Rob Halford can't get his Ripper voice up into the fifth octave. 

One can observe not only from the Little Girl Blue book Finnforest mentioned but also various documentaries, a tendency by Richard and Agnes to control Karen Carpenter and shape her career in a way THEY wanted and not necessarily what she sought out.  This is also why the solo album drove Richard crazy; the very idea of Karen swinging freely to disco was too much for him to take.  No, Karen HAD to be the homely nightbird singing in that precocious manner and nothing else would do.

Yes, that another great point! She didn't want to be the "frontperson." She considered herself a drummer-first and wanted to be the drummer who sang, think Don Henley. But, again, family and management forced her into that role.

Ronstadt seems very different in that she was "in charge" in a big way. I haven't read her story, but it sure appears that she did what she wanted, when she wanted, and called all the shots. 

Yes, I respect her a lot for her versatility.  Emotionally I don't connect much with her singing but her willingness to experiment and repeatedly step out of her comfort zone to stay ahead of the times is very worthy of admiration. Have yet to see the new documentary about her.

This is the brand new feature film documentary!  Have you all heard about this?

Yes, this is the one I mentioned above.  Yet to watch it. Didn't release here and waiting to find it on one of the apps.

 

I'm a big fan of Linda Ronstadt too. I have her rare album of lullabies in my CD collection, titled "Dedicated to the One I Love"

Great thoughts about Karen's voice.  

Singers with a range similar to Karen Carpenter are out there, but yeah, assembly-line entertainment doesn't pay much attention (more into air-raid sirens and nasal Eponine wannabes).

One singer with that style is Weyes Blood, who probably won't be performing on SNL anytime soon, but has garnered a massive cult following. Her latest album has a 91% on metacritic, and the enormous attention given to her on RYM (currently at #2 with a slew of reviews for 2019) tells me the general public are missing out, but there's a hunger for that style of singing by music fans. I saw her live this year; she interchanged from playing keyboards and guitar (not drums though!), and sang superbly throughout. Plus her mere presence was amazing.

As for Janis, for whatever reason, I think if the mid-late 90's female singer/songwriter boom was allowed to continue without the label conglomerates eventually dumping most of the artists for female-hating nu-metal and alt-metal bands, her style could've made a comeback. If I dug around, I feel that I can find some plugging away these days. There's a lot of cool female singers/musicians under the radar.

Thanks for sharing that song of Weyes Blood, nice, evoked British folk singers of the 70s more than Karen, but yeah low range and serene sounding.  

Re Janis, there was Beth Hart but she went through some problems and by the time she got back on track, the industry had moved on.  The appetite for rock music was gone.  That is the weirdest thing I have seen in the last 10 or so years.  People have been writing about rock's demise for years but around the time I was getting into rock (2005-06), there was still a lot of rock around (and even more metal).  Maybe some or even a lot of it was of questionable quality but it was popular for sure.  What I've noticed, though (and this ties in with the point I made earlier), is the reality TV shows discourage rock singers. In season 7 of American Idol, Michael Johns actually got eliminated after a terrific performance of Dream On as Cowell and Randy manufactured flimsy reasons to suggest he shouldn't have taken on that song. As much as us musos pay no heed to these shows, their impact on the GENERAL populace cannot be underestimated and they have served the purpose of streamlining the mainstream sound to a narrow band revolving around R&B.  Makes it predictable and consistent for them, I guess.  

For sure there are plenty of wonderful singers, male and female, flying just under the radar.  It's what is above it that is not very edifying.  As an example, Floor Jansen's performance of Shallow at Beste Zangers notched up well over a million views on Youtube.  Totally mainstream, right?  Except the Lady Gaga performance of it at Oscars got over 200 million views.  And it isn't an Oscar effect.  Her hit songs generally average in the hundreds of millions of views.  That is, somebody who may come across as a star in OUR orbit is actually still flying way under the radar. As Liam Gallagher put it eloquently once, "If you are not on the charts, you don't exist".

I'd love it if wonderful beauties like Weyes Blood can live all comfy off their music and not worry about crap, though I also like seeing my fav current performers at a cool club rather than some stadium in which the tickets were already bought by bots from scumbag re-sellers. Nothing made me happier than seeing these scalpers desperate to sell off their Katy Perry 2017 tickets for pennies. Hilarious. 

The modern "it" scene is such a mess that no-one knows what works. I wanted to like Billie Eilish just for her soft vocals and demeanor...I just wish that I could stand her album before getting annoyed after two songs. No soul-wails or nasal-drills, but damn, her brother sucks.

It's better not to think about mainstream preferences, and just look around a little bit concerning groups similar to your favs. Cool stuff can pop up,and if it'd by an earnest artist with not a lot of YouTube clicks or other crap, let them know you're a fan. Just do it.

 

I never really cared for Ronstadt though, mostly due to a lack of appreciation for the material.  However, this is one stunning piece right here (rather surprisingly penned by none other than Michael Nesmith of Monkees fame)