Should this song have prompted an intervention?

[unicorn]

I can't remember the event, but my husband and I listened to the song "Goodbye to Love" by the Carpenters, and, as I often do when listening to old music, I asked him if he'd heard that song before. He said he hadn't, but remarked "Those lyric are really dark!" (or words to that effect). I was a young child when it came out, and it had never occurred to me to listen to the lyrics. I was shocked to read them, especially since we now know she died due to mental illness, apparently feeling unloved (she had an unhappy marriage and filed for divorce prior to her death). If a friend of mine had sung such lyrics, I would have taken him aside and expressed by concerns. It feels super-creepy to listen to those lyrics in retrospect. So sad that she never received the care she should have. 

"I'll say goodbye to love
No one ever cared if I should live or die
Time and time again the chance for love has passed me by
And all I know of love
Is how to live without it
I just can't seem to find it

So I've made my mind up
I must live my life alone
And though it's not the easy way
I guess I've always known
I'd say goodbye to love...

All the years of useless search
Have finally reached an end
Loneliness and empty days will be my only friend
From this day love is forgotten
I'll go on as best I can...".

I've definitely felt depressed before, but at no time have I ever felt that no one ever cared if I should live or die. If she really felt that way, and it seems she did, life must have been agony for her. 😢

[Pete1111]

I'm surprised you had not heard the song before.  I'm a big fan, though, so I'm familiar with all their hits.

Karen Carpenter didn't write those lyrics, but it's possible they are a reflection of her experience.  I don't know. 

She died many years later.

 

Rainy Days and Mondays was a huge hit, also with sad lyrics.    

Talkin' to myself and feelin' old
Sometimes I'd like to quit
Nothin' ever seems to fit

 

One of their songs I had never heard before until I listened to a cover on YouTube is "I Need to Be in Love".  Apparently it was well know and loved in Japan.  

Once I heard it, I loved it immediately.  This one also is a bit melancholy.  It's very beautiful. 💓

Again Karen did not write the lyrics.  

Many say the quality of Karen Carpenter's voice remains in a class by itself.

 

 

 

 

 

[unicorn]

38 minutes ago, Pete1111 said:

I'm surprised you had not heard the song before... She died many years later....

I had heard that song before; it was my husband who hadn't. That being said, my age was in the single digits when the song came out, so I never thought of listening to the lyrics before. Her beautiful voice has had no equal. I was an undergraduate at UCLA when she died. I remember when she died there were sick comments along the lines of "If only Karen Carpenter and Mama Cass had shared that sandwich, they'd both be alive today" (Mama Cass was described as having died choking on a ham sandwich by The Hollywood Reporter, though the person who wrote that in her obituary admitted in 2020 that she'd lied about that).

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/arts/music/cass-elliot-mamas-and-the-papas-death.html

"...For years, the origin of the story that Elliot died from choking on a ham sandwich — one of the cruelest and most persistent myths in rock ’n’ roll history — was largely unknown. Then in 2020, Elliot’s friend Sue Cameron, an entertainment journalist, admitted to publicizing it in her Hollywood Reporter obituary at the behest of Elliot’s manager Allan Carr, who did not want his client associated with drug use. (Elliot died of a heart attack, likely brought on by years of substance abuse and crash dieting.) But that cartoonish rumor — propagated in endless pop culture references, from “Austin Powers” to “Lost” — cast a tawdry light over Elliot’s legacy and still threatens to overshadow her mighty, underappreciated talent...".

[PeterRS]

If you look through the massive cataolgue of songs, old and not so old, you will find plenty with lyrics which suggest all manner of mental issues. I have no idea why @unicorn reckons this particular one so shocking. As I'm a bit older, I can remember this from Roy Orbison "It's Over". Like @unicorn I rarely paid much attention to the words and did not realise it referred to the break up of a relationship, but the title and the repetition in the second verse of "It's over, it's over. it's over" made the young me think it was about the end of life.

What about Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"?

Mama, put my guns in the ground, I can’t shoot them anymore. That long black cloud is comin’ down. I feel like I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door

The pain of lineliness is also expressed in Eric Carmen's "All By Myself" (with the melody stolen from Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto)?

Most that I can recall refer to an expression of the loss of someone, not the singer. But the effect on the original listeners who rarely if ever considered context was vitually the same. Elton John/Bernie Taupin's original "Candle in the Wind" after the death of Marilyn Monroe

Loneliness was tough,The toughest role you ever played, Hollywood created a superstar, And pain was the price you paid.

Or Metallica's "Fade to Black"? 

I have lost the will to live, Simply nothing more to give, There is nothing more for me, I need the end to set me free

But go back in time through the classical canon and you find composers almost preoccupied with songs about death. Bach's cantata "Ich habe genug" meaning essentially "I have had enough and wait to go to my Maker" is probably the most obvious. Just before his death in 1949 Richard Strauss wrote his hauntingly beautiful "Four Last Songs". I adore the third "Beim Schlafengehen" (While Going Too Sleep) which ends -

Hands, cease your activity; Head, forget all of your thoughts; all my senses now will sink into slumber. And my soul, unobserved, will float about on untrammelled wings in the enchanted circle of the night, living a thousandfold more deeply.

[Olddaddy]

Try to listening to "hit me ...hit me .hit me with your Rhythm stick !!

 

[unicorn]

17 hours ago, PeterRS said:

If you look through the massive cataolgue of songs, old and not so old, you will find plenty with lyrics which suggest all manner of mental issues. I have no idea why @unicorn reckons this particular one so shocking....

Well, there are a lot of other songs which talk about welcoming death, but I found lyrics such as "No one ever cared if I should live or die," and "Loneliness and empty days will be my only friend" as particularly specific, poignant, personal, and disturbing. Who else have expressed the feeling that at no point in their life have they ever felt love? Not even as a child? Didn't even her brother tell her at some point that he loves her? How much more gut-wrenching can it be to think that the ONLY "friend" you'll EVER have are loneliness and empty days? A good understanding of anorexia nervosa continues to elude us, although a lack of self-esteem seems to be at the core. I suppose that by disfiguring themselves, anorexics feel a sense of self-control. They control the reason people won't love them? It's a form of self-mutilation, I suppose. 

For me, at least the examples you gave aren't at the level of starkness and specificity as KC's lyrics. One can have pain, but still have hope. It's one thing to express pain, but Karen's words expressed a complete abandonment of hope, at least as I understand them: one can look forward only the empty, lonely days. I wonder if anyone ever said to her "You matter to me!"? If I can believe those lyrics, it doesn't appear as if anyone did (at least not in a way that was communicated to her believably). And yes, I know she wasn't the actual song-writer/lyricist, but she clearly gave direction to whomever it was. 

[Lucky]

Why not go on a cruise and forget these old songs, and even this website? Take a break!

[unicorn]

1 hour ago, Lucky said:

Why not go on a cruise and forget these old songs, and even this website? Take a break!

Because I don't take orders from you? 😜

[PeterRS]

3 hours ago, Lucky said:

Why not go on a cruise and forget these old songs, and even this website? Take a break!

@unicorn rather suggests in the title of this thread that this song should have prompted an intervention. You can acually say that about a very large number of songs. Many people knew about Karen Carpenter's mental issues and depression did nothing. Why therefore would a song prompt action? An action from whom?

Songs with the sentiment of desperation were rarely regarded as indicative of mental illness, Certainly hardly ever as a prelude to suicide. Yet Kurt Cobain's lyrics with Nirvana, especially "Something in the Way" and others illustrate the very dark period he went through in his life. Indeed the lyrics of American songs seem to betray a good deal more inner darkness than those from other countries. Cobain struggled with much mental pain before taking his own life at age 27. 

On the other side of the ocean, George Michael had been battling with severe depression for 12 years, with paralysing grief and unhappiness before his death aged 53. He could not come to terms with the loss of his lover to AIDS and the death of his mother. Also the possibility that the public might find out about his homosexuality. Even though he died from a heart attack, should he not have benefitted from an intervention the more so as his songs indicate deep depression?

I believe it was Kierkegaard who remarked that the commonest form of despair is not being who you are. The fact is that even though 'stars' are surrounded by friends, lovers, family, adoring fans and a plethora of hangers on, many - more than we may think - suffer from loneliness of a depth few feel. Some become more the star than their real selves. If Karen Carpenter suffered in her life, it was those around her who should have noticed and should have reacted. I am sure some did, just as some of those dearest to them try to prevent all manner of addictions to find help and prevent suicide. Too often, sadly, some such attempts are unsuccessful.

[Lucky]

14 hours ago, unicorn said:

Because I don't take orders from you? 😜

Gosh, you don't know the difference between a suggestion and an order.