"America"- Pristine Vocals and Smooth Arrangements

By the time this album was released, it had been years since Karen and Richard had a bonafide hit. They tried hard to remedy that- and suceeded, for the most part. The first radio single "Touch Me When We're Dancing" shimmers. It represents the best of the duo: warm, tender vocals; understated arrangement and lyrics of yearning for love. A wiser, more mature Karen emerges on "Strength of A Woman", but she lets her wandering man come home. The forgotten single of 1978, "I Believe You" shows the power behind the voice. The heartbreaking lyrics and sensational arrangement make for an instant classic. The only misstep on the album is a limp remake of "Beechwood 4-5789", an obvious attempt to remake the success of "Please Mr. Postman". Karen was no longer sweet sixteen, but a woman of 31, and overall this collection shows why she was the best of her generation, and of those before or after.

Karen's voice at its sweetest and most expressionistic.

I have been a Carpenter's fan since I first saw Karen wearing a yellow dress and singing "Rainy Days and Mondays". I have listened to, and purchased everything I could get my hands on that remotely had anything to do with her voice and talent. The "Made In America" album is Karen's voice at its finest. It is at the same time the sweetest and most expressionistic of any other albums that do not have her sounding melencholy. It, to me, is profoundly ironic that the album that I feel most exemplifies the optimism that she and Richard portrayed was in fact the last album to be released before her death. The optimism and sweetness of her voice have no better memorial than this album and its orchestration.

Simply the peak of "Carpenter" effort

Granted, I have some sentimental reasons for loving this album. I had just gotten married when it was released and several of the album's songs spoke to the wonder of a new life with my wife.

However, it is the beautiful texture of the album in its entirety that makes this the Carpenters' best effort. The songs do not just sing out with catchy melodies and arrangements, they speak to the listener in quiet words that hide just below the surface of the actual recording.

This album is pure poetry and each session I spend listening to it reminds me how great our loss was when Karen died just a short while later. And frankly, I was not that much of a "Carpenters" fan!

At a time when punk was ascendant and disco was waning, Karen and Richard Carpenter crafted an album that will endure long after the world forgets The Sex Pistols, Blondie, and Saturday Night Fever.

This is a gem that belongs in everyone's music collection.

skip it

Karen was the finest pop singer of the 70's - but this album was released in 1981 as her self-confidence was ebbing (shelved solo album, bad marriage, worsening anorexia), and for once she was unable to overcome Richard's treacly arrangements. The material is possibly the lamest they recorded. (Only "I Believe You," recorded in '78, and "Beechwood 4-5789," ruined by a painfully cute arrangement, rise to Karen's standards.) The airbrushed cover is a sad but apt indication of what lies within. Hard to say what was the bigger crime: that Karen's solo album was shelved in favor of this tripe, or that it was the last album that came out before she died.

spends a lot of time in the CD player

I find the departure from the jazzier style refreshing for a Carpenter's CD. I love the production on "I want you back in my life again". OK, it's pure pop, but there's no pretense that it is anything but. Pure zeal and that beautiful layered vocal climax. Other highlights "When you got what it takes" "I believe you" and "Touch me when we're dancing".

Touch Me When We're Dancing!

"Made In America" is The Carpenters finest moment of the 1980s! Essential and recommended!