Tapestry

Recorded in January 1971 at A&M Studios, Studio B, with the engineer Hank Cicalo. The Carpenters were working in Studio A and Joni Mitchell was making Blue in Studio C. The sessions overlapped with James Taylor's Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon, and the two albums shared musicians. King's band sometimes slipped into Mitchell's studio when she was away, since the piano was better, and Mitchell came by to sing backing vocals with Taylor on You've Got a Friend and Will You Love Me Tomorrow? Adler wanted the record to sound like the understated demos King made when writing for other artists, a woman at the piano singing straight to the listener.

King wrote or co-wrote every song. Toni Stern wrote the words for It's Too Late and Where You Lead, and Goffin co-wrote three, among them Will You Love Me Tomorrow and (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, both old hits for other singers. The cover photograph, taken by Jim McCrary in the living room of her home at 8815 Appian Way, Laurel Canyon, shows her barefoot on a bench by a window holding a tapestry she had stitched herself, with her cat Telemachus near her foot.

Reception

It spent 15 consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard 200, the longest run for a female solo artist, and stayed on the chart for more than six years. It is certified 14 times platinum in the United States. In Britain it reached number four and spent 136 weeks in the top 100. In Canada it was number one for nine weeks from 3 July 1971. Its lead single, It's Too Late paired with I Feel the Earth Move, was number one for five weeks.

At the 14th Grammy Awards in 1972 it won album of the year, record of the year for It's Too Late, song of the year for You've Got a Friend and best female pop vocal. Jon Landau of Rolling Stone wrote that King had made an album of surpassing personal intimacy and musical accomplishment, and Robert Christgau said her voice, free of technical decorum, would liberate female singers. Jenn Pelly of Pitchfork wrote that Tapestry used the room itself as an instrument. Rolling Stone placed it 36th in its 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums and 25th in 2020. It entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998 and the National Recording Registry in 2003, and is in the 2018 edition of 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. King played it complete for the first time at Hyde Park on 3 July 2016, released in 2017 as Tapestry: Live at Hyde Park.