Rainy Days and Mondays

Richard found it in a stack of demos from Almo and Irving, A&M's publishing houses, along with Let Me Be the One. They recorded both and picked this one as their fifth single. He wrote that two listenings convinced him it was perfect for Karen and himself, and that he kept the arrangement rather sparse to show off her reading. She was a few weeks short of her twenty-first birthday when she cut the lead. Karen said in an early interview that when she sang it she slipped into a different world. Williams' demo was about his mother and gave the line about talking to myself and feeling old. Bob Messenger played the saxophone solo and Tommy Morgan the harmonica.

It peaked at number 2 on the Hot 100, kept from the top by Carole King's It's Too Late and I Feel the Earth Move, and spent seven weeks in the top 10. It was their fourth number one on the Adult Contemporary chart and the RIAA certified it gold. In Britain it charted only in a 1993 reissue, at number 63. Jeremy Allen of the Guardian wrote that it shows Karen's gift for conveying pathos, and the guitarist Pat Metheny recorded it for a tribute to the duo.