Carole King

Overview

Born
February 9, 1942 · New York City, New York, USA
Birth name
Carol Joan Klein
Nickname
- Carole King
Height
5′ 2″ (1.57 m)

Mini bio

Carole King is an American composer and singer-songwriter.

She is the most successful female songwriter of the latter half of the 20th century in the USA, having written or co-written 118 pop hits on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1955 and 1999. King also wrote 61 hits that charted in the UK, making her the most successful female songwriter on the UK singles charts between 1952 and 2005.

King's career began in the 1960s when she and her first husband, Gerry Goffin, wrote more than two dozen chart hits for numerous artists, many of which have become standards. She has continued writing for other artists since then. King's success as a performer in her own right did not come until the 1970s, when she sang her own songs, accompanying herself on the piano, in a series of albums and concerts. After experiencing commercial disappointment with her debut album 'Writer', King scored her breakthrough with the album 'Tapestry', which topped the U.S. album chart for 15 weeks in 1971 and remained on the charts for more than six years. King has made 25 solo albums, the most successful being 'Tapestry', which held the record for most weeks at No. 1 by a female artist for more than 20 years. Her most recent non-compilation album was 'Live at the Troubadour' in 2010, a collaboration with James Taylor that reached number 4 on the charts in its first week and has sold over 600,000 copies. Her records sales were estimated at more than 75 million copies worldwide.
- IMDb mini biography by: Tango Papa

Family

Spouses
Children
Parents
Relatives

Trademarks

Soft, sultry singing voice

Trivia

One of music's great songwriters, her 1971 album "Tapestry" spent more than 300 weeks on the US charts.
She is a composer-performer who wrote numerous hit songs for other performers before achieving fame on her own with the album "Tapestry" in 1971. Among her compositions during this early period, usually written in collaboration with first husband Gerry Goffin, were "Take Good Care of My Baby", a #1 hit in 1961 for Bobby Vee; "Go Away, Little Girl", a #1 hit for both Steve Lawrence (1963) and Donny Osmond (1971); "The Loco-Motion", a #1 hit for both Little Eva (1963) and Grand Funk Railroad (1974); and "Pleasant Valley Sunday", a top-ten hit in 1967 for The Monkees. She, herself, had a top-20 hit during this period, as well, "It Might As Well Rain Until September" (1961), also co-written with Goffin.
Ex-girlfriend of Neil Sedaka. He wrote his first hit, "Oh! Carol", for her.
Ranked #10 on VH1's 100 Greatest Women of Rock N Roll
Has four children: Levi Larkey, Louise Goffin, Molly Larky, and Sherry Goffin Kondor.

Quotes

My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue, an everlasting vision of the everchanging view.
[about the performance challenges she has faced] All I needed to do was sing with conviction, speaking my truth from the heart, honestly and straightforwardly, and to offer my words, ideas and music to the audience as if it were one collective friend that I'd known for a very long time.
I need a reason to make music and I haven't had one.