Last night a friend turned me on to this astonishing recording. I had always assumed that the Eagles’ version of their song “Desperado” was definitive — the sine qua non of the idea of sad and beautiful “broken romance”.
But then, yesterday, my friend told me about Karen Carpenter’s version. Yes, I know — the Carpenters are not cool. According to the conventional pop-culture wisdom, there is no excuse for liking or appreciating them, blah, blah, blah.
But just listen to what Karen Carpenter does with this — the sadness, the sense of loss, the life never lived. If you can make it all the way through her rendition of this song without feeling the tragedy of missed connections, of life envisioned but somehow never realized, then there is something seriously wrong with you.