"The Singles 1969-1973" is an album by the brother/sister pop duo The Carpenters. A greatest hits collection, it topped the charts in the U.S. and the United Kingdom and became one of the best-selling albums of the 1970s. It has been certified 8x platinum in the U.S. alone.( wikipedia )
Carpenters is the third studio album by the Carpenters. Released on May 14, 1971, the album was successful, reaching #2 on the Billboard 200 chart and #12 in the UK. With the hit songs "For All We Know", "Rainy Days and Mondays" and "Superstar", Carpenters solidified Karen Carpenter as one of her generation's most endearing pop vocalists.(wikipedia)
"Now & Then" is the fifth album from The Carpenters, released on May 9, 1973. In Cash Box Year-End Charts of 1973, Now & Then appeared at number 20. The song "Sing" reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and number-one on the easy listening chart, and it became the group's seventh gold single. Side "B" of the album featured an oldies medley. The medley starts with the Carpenters' original, "Yesterday Once More". Tony Peluso, the Carpenters' electric guitarist, is heard as a radio DJ throughout the medley, which included such songs as "The End of the World", "Dead Man's Curve", "Johnny Angel" and "One Fine Day".{ wikipedia }
The duo's best album, and the place to start beyond the hits compilations. Up to the release of A Song for You, the Carpenters' success had seemed an awesome if somewhat fluky phenomenon, built on prodigious talent, some beautifully crafted pop sensibilities, and a very fortunate choice of singles(Bruce Eder - AllMusic Guide)
The best of these are "Where Do I Go From Here" and "You're The One", which both reaffirm that Karen was the finest ballad singer of the 1970s: No one could fill up, and out, a melody or cut to the blood and guts of the ickiest love song as she could. In fact, voices like Karen Carpenter's never really go out of style; "Lovelines" reveals just a few of the avenues that would have been open to her. But sadly, the Seventies never really ended for Karen Carpenter; she died before she could shed the goody-two-shoes image that shrouded her immense talent. As such, "Lovelines" becomes her essential epitaph.( Rob Hoerburger - Rolling Stone, Feb 1990 )
An Old-Fashioned Christmas is a Christmas album from The Carpenters, released in 1984 after the death of singer/drummer Karen Carpenter. The album project had its genesis in several unused tracks from the Carpenters' previous Christmas album, 1978's Christmas Portrait. Richard Carpenter took these tracks and recorded new material around them, and this album was the end result. The album (in its original LP and cassette form) includes the slow version of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" (a faster version appeared on the Christmas Portrait album).(wikipedia)
Hurriedly put together in the wake of the success of the title song, and containing the follow-up hit "We've Only Just Begun," Close to You is a surprisingly strong album, and not just for those hits. Richard Carpenter's originals "Maybe It's You" and "Crescent Noon" are superb showcases for Karen Carpenter's developing talent, the latter a superbly atmospheric, hauntingly beautiful art song of the kind that Judy Collins was doing well at the time, and gorgeously arranged.( Bruce Eder - AllMusic Guide )