<p>Louise Gannon tells the story of iconic&nbsp;singer-songwriter Carole King, with excerpts&nbsp;from interviews and her autobiography.</p>

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Carole King is the Taylor Swift of the ’60s and ’70s, and her songs became the definitive soundtrack of her generation.

Born Carol Klein in New York in 1942, she was a teenage musical prodigy who was originally taught to play music by her mother, Eugenia, an amateur actress who also taught piano from their home. By the age of 16, she was writing songs, including Loco-Motion, Will You Love Me Tomorrow and (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, with her musical partner – and first husband – Gerry Goffin.

Her album Tapestry remains one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, and sparked the award-winning stage musical, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, which was performed in the United States, London, and in Australia.

Hers is a tumultuous life. Married and divorced four times (to songwriter Gerry Goffin, 1959 to 1969; musician Charles Larkey, 1970 to 1976; musician Rick Evers, 1977 to 1978; and lastly a rancher from Idaho named Rick Sorenson, whom she married in 1982 and divorced in 1987). Carole has four children: musicians Louise and Sherry Goffin, artist Molly Larkey, and Levi Larkey. She remains a committed environmental and political activist, recently lending her support to Hillary Clinton.

But it is her songs that remain as powerful today as they did four decades ago. “A song like You’ve Got A Friend is still sung today,” says Carole. “That makes me very happy.”

I was never told, “You can’t do this because

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