You've Got a Friend

Carole King wrote it in January 1971, during the sessions for Tapestry, while Taylor was recording Mud Slide Slim. Taylor said King told him it answered a line in Fire and Rain, "I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend." King has said the song "wrote itself." Both of them recorded it at the same time with some of the same musicians, and Taylor and Danny Kortchmar play on both versions.

Taylor's version, with Joni Mitchell on backing vocals, reached number one on the Hot 100 in July 1971, the only song of his to do so, and number four in the UK. Taylor won the Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance and King won Song of the Year at the 1972 ceremony. Taylor's recording entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2001. Ben Gerson of Rolling Stone called it an affirmative song but thought Taylor's version too close to King's. Mary Hopkin has said Taylor offered her the chance to record it and she declined.

Taylor and King played it together on the 2010 Troubadour Reunion Tour, and in 2015 he performed it at the Hotel de Ville in Paris in tribute to the victims of the January 2015 attacks.