KAREN CARPENTER - A Lifetime of HEARTBREAK

SHE BECAME A SUPERSTAR EVEN AS SHE STRUGGLED WITH A LITTLE UNDERSTOOD EATING DISORDER 

- LOUISE A. BARILE

Karen Carpenter enjoyed testing the limits of her beloved 1979 Jaguar XJS. “She loved to drive up the highway being chased by fans,” biographer Lucy O’Brien shares with Closer.

As one half of the Carpenters, Karen’s honeyed voice and wholesome image made her a superstar in the 1970s. Despite the greatness of the music she left behind, her premature death at age 32 from the complications of anorexia would always color her story with sadness and unfulfilled promise. A new biography seeks to change the tenor of her tragedy. “She’s been presented as a fragile person and a victim,” says O’Brien, author of Lead Sister: The Story of Karen Carpenter. “But I got a sense of a woman who was very driven, pioneering and quite stubborn. She was not a shrinking violet.”

Karen grew up very close to her brother, Richard, who was slightly more than three years older. Like two sides of the same coin, they shared similar opinions on nearly everything. “We were almost like male-female clones. The smiles were identical, and we liked and disliked the same things — not just music: comedians, movies, just about everything,” revealed Richard in 2021’s Carpenters: The Musical Legacy.

Their parents tried to be encouraging of their dreams. When Karen asked for a professional drum kit as a teenager, they purchased it for her even though females rarely played drums in the 1960s. “She learned to play exotic time signatures immediately,” Richard tells