Only Yesterday: The Carpenters Story (2007)

• 79%
• 2007
• Documentary
• Music
• Samantha Peters
• Richard Carpenter
• Karen Carpenter
• Herb Alpert

The Carpenters were never hip but they did produce good melodic songs with strong hooks. Behind the success masked the personal demons of Karen Carpenter who was battling Anorexia which ultimately led to her death in 1983. This documentary looks at the brother and sister duo The Carpenters and Richard Carpenter contributes to the story and although he might gloss over it, the other contributors do not gloss over their sibling rivalry as Karen started to overshadow him. The band makes it big not only because of Richard's tunes but once Karen leaves the drum kit and takes centre stage she had the voice to do the songs justice. However with success came the demons. Richard battled sleeping pill addictions and Karen rapidly loss weight. Although many of the songs are still well known I did not see too many artists queueing up waxing lyrical about the duo's musical legacy. Maybe they still lack the hip factor.