Original Album Classics

So you get four hours of Carole King music for your money here; the selection, I think, is driven out of who owns the rights to the records rather than anything else.It starts with the best of the albums here: Simple Things (1977). This got terrible reviews at the time, but stands up well, with In the Name of Love, One and Simple Things itself as absolute classics. It gave her one hit in 'Hard Rock Cafe' but that isn't my favourite.Next was 'Welcome Home' (1978). The feel of the cover is absolutely weird to see now as it's got Carole King and her then husband Rick Evers looking lovingly into each other's eyes. By the time, the record was released, Evers had died of a cocaine overdose, and King in her memoir says that in the relationship, Evers was regularly physically abusive to her as well as obsessively controlling. So there's something wrong under the surface.But what can you say? The album as a whole isn't brilliant, but 'Morning Sun' is a joyous classic and 'Venusian Diamond' is definitely worth it, as a trippy Pepperesque song.Then, we get to 'Touch the Sky'. It's definitely middling, but it's got a great cover and 'Time Gone by' is brilliant. It's a decent effort, all round.Scratching around to get commercial success, she releases 'Pearls' in 1980, where she revisits old Goffin and King hits from the Sixties. This should be brilliant - think her version of 'Will you still love me tomorrow?' off Tapestry or 'Some Kind of Wonderful' from Music - but somehow isn't. It lacks the energy that others artists give the songs, both in the Sixties and even later on: e.g. try out Billy Joel's version of Hey Girl and it's a lot better.The last album is an outlier, in that it's from 2001 (we've bypasses her minor Eighties albums One to One and Speeding Time, which are largely unloved), and somehow what is here is the 'Deluxe' version of 'Love Makes the World', so it's got seventy minutes of music with seventeen songs including the theme tune from the Gilmore Girls, Where You Lead (I will Follow) as one of the extras.The songs from the album itself are very good, rather than fantastic. But 'Love makes the world' and 'The Reason' are both good efforts and stand up to their equivalent era albums by Elton John, Carly Simon and Paul McCartney.If you want a purer set of classics from the late seventies, look out for a compilation called Time Gone By, which is consistently excellent. If you want a pretty complete record, then this five album set is amazing value.

This ok its all..

Good value set of Carole King cds which I brought as my Lps are getting a bit scratched now.

Just got into Carol King so these box sets are great value

Bought for my husband for Christmas as he loves Carol King's voice.

Always wanted these CDs. Carole King at her finest. Would recommend.

Ok

Excellent