{"id":646720,"date":"2026-05-04T07:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T07:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/646720\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T07:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T07:34:10","slug":"4-songs-by-the-carpenters-that-still-sound-magical-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/646720\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Songs by The Carpenters That Still Sound Magical Today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For more than a decade, The Carpenters had hit after hit on the radio. The duo, made up of siblings Richard Carpenter and Karen Carpenter, was a mainstay on the charts for years. Their legacy in music was cut tragically short when Karen Carpenter <a href=\"https:\/\/americansongwriter.com\/on-this-day-in-1983-the-world-lost-one-of-the-greatest-singers-ever-and-one-half-of-an-iconic-brother-sister-duo\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">passed away<\/a> in 1983 from the effects of her struggle with anorexia nervosa.<\/p>\n<p>Among The Carpenters\u2019 many hits are these four songs, which sound just as good today as they did when they were released.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c(They Long To Be) Close To You\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Carpenters\u2019 first No.1. single, \u201c(They Long To Be) Close to You\u201d is on their sophomore Close To You record. The song is written by\u00a0 Burt Bacharach and Hal David.<\/p>\n<p>Herb Alpert recorded a version of \u201c(They Long To Be) Close To You\u201d. He gave Richard Carpenter the lead sheet but did not let him hear his recording.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe said, \u2018I have a recording of this, but I don\u2019t want you to hear it,\u2019\u201d Richard Carpenter <a href=\"https:\/\/www.songfacts.com\/facts\/carpenters\/they-long-to-be-close-to-you\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">recalls.<\/a> \u201c\u2018I don\u2019t want anything to influence what I may come up with. Just keep, at the end of the first bridge, two piano quintuplets.\u2019 That record, that song, the arrangement, all of it, is misleading to the uninitiated, because it sounds simple. And it\u2019s anything but simple.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRainy Days And Mondays\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On Carpenters, their third studio album, is \u201cRainy Days And Mondays\u201d. Written by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols, Richard Carpenter later <a href=\"https:\/\/americansongwriter.com\/the-carpenters-classic-that-highlighted-karens-way-with-a-sad-song\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">said<\/a> he wanted his sister\u2019s stunning vocals to be prevalent in the song, which is why the production on the song is not as full as some of their other songs.<\/p>\n<p>Before \u201cRainy Days And Mondays\u201d got to The Carpenters, it was pitched to The 5th Dimension. Fortunately, they passed on \u201cRainy Days And Mondays\u201d, making it one of The Carpenters\u2019 biggest hits instead.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTop Of The World\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Richard Carpenter and John Bettis penned \u201cTop Of The World\u201d. The song appears on their fourth studio album, A Song For You.<\/p>\n<p>Although \u201cTop Of The World\u201d is written by Richard Carpenter, it wasn\u2019t a single for them initially. Instead, Lynn Anderson first had a hit with \u201cTop Of The World\u201d in 1973, making it the title track of one of her albums. Buoyed by Anderson\u2019s success with the song, The Carpenters released their own version.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve Only Just Begun\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One of their most popular songs is \u201cWe\u2019ve Only Just Begun\u201d. On Close To You,\u00a0 Williams and Nichols are the two writers of the song. Credited with helping The Carpenters\u2019 popularity increase, \u201cWe\u2019ve Only Just Begun\u201d began as a commercial.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0In 1988, \u201cWe\u2019ve Only Just Begun\u201d was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n<p>Photo by Roger Jackson\/Central Press\/Hulton Archive\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For more than a decade, The Carpenters had hit after hit on the radio. The duo, made up&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,7021,75,341,240678],"class_list":["post-646720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-classic-rock","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-the-carpenters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}