[Cherchez la femme.]
Revisiting A&M Records No. 21
Claudine Longet: ‘Claudine’ (April ’67)
Claudine Longet: ‘The Look of Love’ (October ’67)
A&M Records Highlights: Claudine
Soft pop
A&M Records Highlights: Carpenters
Like so many other platinum acts from A&M Records’s pre-rock catalog, the Carpenters struck me even from a single-digit age as featherlight schlock, inescapably omnipresent (especially in the ‘70s) but instantly dismissed by Gen X’ers (I’m one) who had yet to grow out of ironic hipster attitudes toward everything straight-laced and square.
Some of you surely remember as fondly as I do how that outlook changed dramatically for the better via the 1994 compilation ‘If I Were a Carpenter.’ At the height of grunge, here was an earnestly sincere salute to all this sterling popcraft we’d never properly appreciated.
A&M Records Highlights: Burt Bacharach
Like so many other milestones from the early A&M Records catalog, these records were always a reach away in my pre-digital childhood home — yet rarely were they played. I’ve always put their neglect down to the instant antiquity of ever-changing styles.