TOP OF THE WORLD, MA!

It seems pretty clear in this video that poor Karen Carpenter (wikilink) has a problem.

I first heard this song on a brilliant false-spring morning in Lincoln Nebraska. The sun had warmed the little unheated porch behind my kitchen that I’d left closed till then.

I sat and smoked pot and drank coffee and watched the icicles drip, and read George Eliot. I was feeling pretty good, like the song says. I maybe wasn’t on top of the world, but I was pretty high.

I am abject. I’m wriggling in the mudpit of shame, but darn it, I like this song.

But poor Karen! That dress? If that frumpy frock is not a cry for help, what is? And her gestures, what little movement we see is sort of Judy Garlandish, like, geeky!

Short term interests must have trumped long term. I mean, the girl should have been in serious rehab, not out on the road, or in the studio cranking out moneymakers. By the time of this clip she probably had financial resources enough to take a year or more off, but other people probably needed paychecks.

She died young of anorexia.

I didn’t like her. Her brother gives me the creeps. But this is a well-made song with very high production values. I’m a sucker for the steel guitar.

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