How many broken hearts will be singing in the Underworld? Janis Joplin sings the blues and drinks heavenly booze while Elliott Smith and Amy Winehouse share a couch with the depressed feeling that eternal life offers as legends. Kurt Cobain watches the show while writing sarcastic songs our ears will never hear. It is a fictional, but perfect place where those young souls who died because of love rest. In the center stands Karen Carpenter, a shy girl in a long dress dancing on her feet to a slow song playing in her headphones. Her long hair dances perfectly to the rhythm of the melody.
The sweet singer and drummer of The Carpenters whose tragic life made her one of the first women to die a victim of passion and mental disorders. Karen died at age 32 as a result of anorexia nervosa she suffered much of her life, but some say fame was the real culprit.
She was not the obsessive, pale girl that onlookers watched during the last years of her life; as a child, she enjoyed dancing and didn’t have too many problems on her mind. She admired her brother Richard and liked his talent on the piano. The sweet little girl was unaware that, with him, she would start a band that would lead her life to perdition.
The Rise of The Carpenters and the Fall of Karen
Their adventure began when Karen and Richard started playing jazz and recording their first songs between 1965 and 1966. Although the young woman was healthy and performed excellently on stage as a vocalist and drummer, a doctor told her she should start dieting.
Carpenter weighed about 145 pounds, which was considerable for a 16-year-old woman of her height (5.3 ft). The doctor recommended the Stillman Diet, which eliminated fats from her diet and completely disrupted her system. The beautiful girl with the puffy cheeks slowly disappeared until she lost 8 pounds a year.
It is speculated that soon after The Carpenters’ career began to generate success, Karen developed a strong obsession with staying thin and rigorously followed her doctor’s recommendations. In 1970, the band reached stardom with their second album, and although she seemed happy, deep down she had problems she didn’t know how to solve.
Karen and James: A Tragic Love Story
As a way to drown that pain, she dated multiple men like Steve Martin and Tony Danza, until finally, in 1979, she thought she found love in a real estate agent named Thomas James Burris, who brought her life to even greater ruin.
The drummer and vocalist has been described by multiple people as a strong but shy woman. Few fully know what happened in their relationship, but some sources indicate that the man made her feel insecure, mistreated her, abused her, and cheated on her with other women.
Burris used money from Karen’s account to invest in different businesses, while she was left with only a few dollars to survive. That year defined her fate. She lost more and more weight and looked less and less energetic in front of the press, and her friends said that there were times when her nerves were so destroyed that she could not eat because she was crying so much.
Soon after, she decided to get divorced and raise her musical career again. She planned different presentations and recordings, but her psyche and body were too unstable. She took thyroid replacement medication to speed up her metabolism and treat her anorexia, but it only made her lose more weight and made it difficult for her to eat.
Within a year, she was hospitalized and put under treatment which finally made her gain a few pounds. However, her body was so deteriorated that the process worsened her heart condition. In early 1983, everything seemed to be improving, and Karen agreed to participate in the 25th anniversary celebration of the Grammy Awards.
Some noted that the woman looked weak and too thin, but others said she looked at her best and was too cheerful. No one knew that this would be her last public appearance. In less than a month, she would be reuniting with the great legends of music in that fantastic place where they are still trying to heal their broken hearts.
Karen Carpenter’s Sad Ending
Karen died on February 4, 1983, shortly before her 33rd birthday. She woke up in the morning and was ready to sign the final papers to make her divorce official and start her new life, but her heart could take no more. She fell unconscious and started having heartbeats every 10 seconds until it finally stopped. The anorexia had ended any function, and the organ simply could not take it. She lost her life without healing her wounds completely, while the world will have the memory of her beautiful melodies.
Carpenter’s story is as brief as her life. Although she was a cheerful woman in front of the public; in private, she had her ghosts to overcome. So it happened to the other greats who died leaving an enormous legacy and now inhabit an imaginary room in the minds of those who love the history of music. In that place, he will live forever, with the smile that the world knew and the voice that mesmerized an entire generation.
This story was originally published in Spanish in Cultura Colectiva
