My new fave: The 2nd Karen Carpenter LP redone tracks produced by Phil Ramone

MY FAVE new CD KAREN CARPENTER #METWO on Youtube https://youtu.be/BYtoS9ksohE

<#METWO The remaining songs of Karen Carpenter Solo - These songs would have been mixed for her second LP had A&M sanctioned the release of her first in 1980. All of these songs have been edited, instrumentation added and cleaned from an initial cassette leak of demos recorded with Phil Ramone 1979-80 . All of Karen's remaining demos from these sessions had been leaked onto the internet in 1996. This is not an official release but a more concrete and concise idea of what Ramone & Karen were trying to create. In a separate interview from his New York office, producer Phil Ramone discussed his and Karen's objective on the album. "We were thinking two things: How do we make a record that doesn't sound like the Carpenters, and what could we say lyrically in these songs that has a more mature attitude?" Richard Carpenter remembers giving Karen a mixed, but essentially lukewarm, review of the solo project. "I probably said it was very nice," he said. "It certainly is well-produced and well-assembled. But some of it was disco, and I'm not a disco fan, and I thought she was singing a little bit too high on some of the songs." And Carpenter applied some not-so-subtle pressure on Karen by telling her how eager he was to begin work on the next Carpenters album. "I was much better by then and was kicking myself for what I had done to my life," he said. "So I mentioned that whenever she was ready, I was ready. I had all the tunes set to go." The deciding factor came when A&M executives asked Karen and Ramone to go back into the studio to record a few more songs for the solo project. It was up to Karen to decide if she wanted to spend more time on it or not," Richard said. "She didn't and that was that. I've gotten a lot of letters through the years since Karen passed on kind of accusing me of not releasing the solo album. It's not my doing at all. It's Karen's wishes I'm honoring." In a 1981 interview, Karen said that Richard's desire to get back to work took precedence over completing the solo project. But Karen added that she valued the solo experience. "It was fun cutting it and seeing that I could do all that--sing a different type of tune and work with different people. I was scared to death beforehand. I basically knew one producer, one arranger, one studio, one record company and that was it. . . . I'm used to being part of a duo. Richard's like a third arm to me." Stung by the cool reception at the playback session, Ramone and Karen went to Mexico for a vacation. "I watched this girl disintegrate in front of me," Ramone said. "It was hard for her to express anger, but sometimes she'd be sitting there and she'd say, 'Why is this happening? What did I do wrong? Should we listen to the tape? Is it the mix?' " But Ramone said that Karen was ultimately proud of the album: "It was the first step to her standing on her own and also the last chance. "I truly believe that if she had made it through this she could have gone on to have a long career," Ramone said. "A lot of the pop songs and movie songs and duets of the '80s would have been hers. "A voice like Karen's--rich, womanly--comes along once every 20 years. Voices like that should have a chance to do a variety of things." Damn shame. Karen Carpenter was A Gift To the World. Keep My Lovelight Burnin 0:01 Dont Try To Win Me Back Again 3:16 Somethings Missing In My Life 6:16 Truly You 9:25 I Do It For Your Love 12:36 Jimmy Mack 16:27 Love Making Love To You 20:00 Midnight (Never Lets You Down) 22:40 Its Really You Its Really Me/Reprise 26:13 I Wanna Be Free (not from Ramone session) 31:16