Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of Karen Carpenter's death. It still makes me sad that she was only 32 at the time, only a dozen years after she and Richard charted all those pop hits. Love or hate the Carpenters, Karen had an stunning voice. Here's a tribute that aired on NPR's "All Things Considered" yesterday:

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlaye ... =171103787

My current top 5 of Karen or Carpenters songs:

Superstar
Happy
I Believe You
If I Had You
Road Ode

I heard that piece. It was one of those driveway moments where you sit with the engine running to hear the end.

She had an amazingly lovely voice.

Even in my "heavier-than-thou" teen-age phase in the early 70s, I was a complete sucker for Karen's angelic vocals and Richard's perfect pop confections. "Superstar" is some kind of masterpiece.

God, I miss Karen Carpenter.

Certainly one of the greatest pop singers. "Goodbye To Love" and her "Desperado" are also among my favorites.

Karen's was one of the voices of my youth - I absolutely loved her voice. Some of the songs didn't grab me as much as others, but "Superstar" and "Rainy Days And Mondays" are forever embedded in my mind. I still stop flipping channels when I hear them. As gorgeous as she was talented. I saw some of the later pictures of her in a biography, and it was hard to believe how thin she had gotten. Can't believe it's been 30 years.

My two favorites remain 2 of her biggest hits, "They Long To Be Close To You" and "We've Only Just Begun". But "Hurting Each Other" is an especially good pop confection with a massive hook.

I don't know who had better hooks in the 70s, Abba or The Carpenters?

My only regret with the Carpenters, besides Karen's untimely passing of course, is that Richard is another one of those artists that must keep tinkering with the finished product. (The other one that always bothered me was Robert Palmer.) I wish someone would come out with a reissue series that restored the original recordings. (The ones that had the original recordings are OOP I believe.)

Karen could sing nearly anything and make it sound wonderful. I have particularly fond memories of my sister & I listening to "Top Of The World" when I was a kid, and it still makes me smile to this day. My favorite underplayed song in their catalog is their version of the Klaatu song, "Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft."

That Klaatu cover Rich mentioned above showed that Karen was willing to spread her musical wings a bit. Who knows what the future might have brought had she lived? I'd had loved to hear her sing bossa nova and other styles from the tropics, but I think she could have also made a decent stab at country. The obligatory Carpenters Unplugged album would have been fantastic, and by the 90's I could even imagine her providing guest vocals for the likes of Massive Attack and Thievery Corporation. Or maybe The Carpenters would have stayed in their niche, the one that they perfected. Either way, I wish she could have been with us longer.

What seems odd today is how, as shocking as her death was, the news reports of Karen Carpenter's death back in 1983 was comparatively respectful, restrained, and non-exploitive. There was a pretty high hurdle that "entertainment news" needed to clear before taking its place alongside the regular "news."

I remember hearing the tail end of a radio news story on the murder of Peter Tosh in Jamaica back in 1987. I was basically left hanging until I was finally able, at least a day later, to go to a newsstand and find a couple of paragraphs deep within Section A of the New York Times which contained a few additional details on the incident, but not many. (I could find no mention of his death at all in any Detroit newspapers or TV stations--not a very big reggae town.)

But back to Karen Carpenter--I can only imagine the nasty Facebook posts her death might have spawned had it happened today.