When I was sitting in a lounge reading Karen Tongson's new book Why Karen Carpenter Matters, a colleague walked by, read the book's title, and just chuckled. Tongson knows the feeling.

I was a senior in college when [1994 tribute album] If I Were a Carpenter came out, and not especially eager to brandish my love of the Carpenters' original music to my Sonic-Youth-worshiping classmates, who already mocked my fandom of 'pop' bands like 10,000 Maniacs.

The Carpenters have come to embody bland musical whiteness in its purest form: even Pat Boone's egregious appropriation of R&B suggests a certain self-awareness (further demonstrated by the heavy metal covers album Boone put out around the time of If I Were a Carpenter), while successors like Barry Manilow embody a sense of flamboyant queerness. Tongson cites a Filipino karaoke machine that has the lyrics of the Carpenters' 1970 single "We've Only Just Begun" referencing "whiteness and promises." (It's actually "white lace.")

In the early '70s, Karen Carpenter and her brother (not her husband, as contemporary promotional materials creepily insinuated) Richard became ground zero for a genre that would become known as "soft rock." As Tongson notes, that was essentially the name given to melodic pop in an era when it contrasted with "hard rock." The Carpenters weren't really trying to "rock" at all; they came out of a jazz-choral tradition baked (and segregated) in the sunny vibes of southern California.

Completing their WASPy bona fides, the Carpenters weren't even from California originally: they moved from Connecticut in search of opportunities for a teenage Richard's burgeoning musical career. Richard was always seen as the family prodigy; when Karen showed musical talent and interest, she followed in his wake. When a Japanese publication misprinted "lead singer" as "lead sister," it was so unintentionally on the nose that Karen put the words on a t-shirt.

As Tongson notes, histories of the Carpenters tend to blame the siblings' domineering mother, perpetually celebrating her son at his younger sister's expense, for inspiring the anorexia that took Karen's life in 1983 at age 32. There's no doubt that Karen had a fraught relationship with her mother, but Tongson also finds that story suspiciously convenient insofar as it excuses the men in Karen's life: the men who describe Karen before the onset of her eating disorder as "a stocky tomboy." Tongson scoffs: "Photographs from that era attest otherwise, at least in the eyes of this legitimately stocky self-identified tomboy with thick thighs, broad shoulders, and an ample torso."

Tongson shares much of her own story in the book, the latest in a relatively new series from the University of Texas Press. In owning and celebrating her own Carpenters fandom — as a queer Filipino-American woman — Tongson opens up new room for nuance on both the production and reception sides of popular music.

On the reception side, Tongson points out that the Carpenters have a Filipino fan base something akin to David Hasselhoff's in Germany...and for reasons that make a lot more sense. Aside from the musical connections the United States and the Philippines have shared since World War II, the Philippines is a country that loves polished, melodic, jazzy music and has no fear of cover bands.

Tongson, in fact, is named for Karen Carpenter. She was born in 1973 to a family of musicians, including a sax-playing great-uncle known as "the Kenny G of the Philippines" and a mother whose singing voice was often compared to Karen Carpenter's. In every meaningful way, this music is in Tongson's blood, complicating the notion of the Carpenters as purely the soundtrack for straight white squares of the '70s.

On the production side, Tongson highlights Karen Carpenter as a strong-willed creative artist who doesn't deserve her stereotyped image as a victim of Me Decade domestic ennui. The Carpenters were straight, but they challenged gender stereotypes: Richard retiring to his basement practice space while Karen roughhoused with neighborhood kids, playing war games and football.

When Karen pursued an instrument in earnest, it wasn't a guitar or keyboard: it was a drum kit. She first trained for drum line, then moved on to emulating jazz drummers like Buddy Rich. Joining her brother in early pop-band configurations, she thought of herself as a drummer who could sing. When they ultimately found success as a duo, she initially determined to stay behind her kit for live shows. Where else would she be?

Perhaps not coincidentally, Karen's health troubles accelerated as she was pressured to step forward and play the role of the traditional female lead vocalist. Her ritual drum solos became mid-show schtick rather than a routine fact of her musicianship, and as she became the band's focal point she faced increasing jealousy from her brother, who still thought of himself as the group's musical mastermind. When she recorded a solo album with producer Phil Ramone in the late '70s, Richard's strident opposition helped result in the project being shelved — it wasn't released until over a decade after Karen's death, despite containing some of the work she'd been most proud of.

Tongson does find time to argue for Carpenter's musical influence: her iconic voice was deliberately unassuming, so effortlessly musical that an early voice teacher told her she should save her money and continue to sing intuitively. Her frequent pairing with Mama Cass unfortunately has more to do with the timing and circumstances of their deaths (Cass also died at 32, in 1974, in her case from heart failure related to obesity) than with any vocal similarities between the crooning Carpenter and the belting Cass, but Tongson suggests the pairing isn't entirely without merit: both were misunderstood and underappreciated in their variant ways of being women.

Both women failed at femininity with their competing expressions of excess, overconsumption versus underconsumption, belying the pathological hungers — desires — that made each of them miss a mark very minutely calibrated by the men who ruled the world, the record companies, and their lives.

She also argues that the Carpenters were the progenitors of the power ballad, one of the defining musical tropes of the '80s, with 1972's "Goodbye to Love," which built from a hushed intro to a distorted Billy Peluso guitar solo: not the first electric guitar solo on a popular ballad, but one that actively pushed against the song's tone in a way that suggested emotions so strong they just had to cut loose! Journey were taking notes.

In her defense of Karen Carpenter, Tongson has allies. Among them are Linda Perry, the 4 Non Blondes singer who became a hitmaking songwriter for later decades' megastars. Carpenter's voice, Perry said, "had too much soul, too much heartbreak, too much pain in it to be just an insecurity."

Then there's k.d. lang, whose understated style was strongly influenced by Carpenter's voice. On top of that, there are the contributors to the If I Were a Carpenter collection: '90s stars like Babes in Toyland, Shonen Knife, and, yes, even Sonic Youth — who also wrote their own song for Karen.

The song Shonen Knife perform on that tribute album is "Top of the World," a number they make buoyant but sounds somehow ineffably sad in Carpenter's original recording. As Stereogum's Tom Breihan writes:

Karen Carpenter had a way of finding a slight tinge of melancholy in songs that otherwise actively resisted the very existence of sadness. Her voice is warm and controlled, and there's an intelligent sparkle in it. On "Top of the World," she sings about finding some transporting level of happiness: "Not a cloud in the sky, got the sun in my eyes/ And I won't be surprised if it's a dream." But Karen's voice holds on the word "dream," like she's seizing on that as the likeliest possible explanation.

The Current's Why Karen Carpenter Matters Giveaway

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