Carpenters//"I Need To Be In Love"

This time of year always makes me feel lonely. The cooler days, the longer nights, the sweaters and scarves, the falling leaves and outdoor cafes, the constant reminders of the coming long winter months...everything about this time of year makes me want to hold someone close...to have someone to hold close. Saying that I "need" to be in love would probably be a gross overstatement (I have, after all, gone all these years without and am doing pretty fine), but autumn in New York is pretty much the closest I ever come to saying so.

I love Karen Carpenter and never really understood her being the poster child for fake '70s smiley-faced sentimental easily listening love pop. Even at her most supposedly-saccharine ("Close to You", "We've Only Just Begun"), the songs for me have always been more about the sadness and longing and loss than they were about that faintest glimmer of hope that arises from it. It's sad that it was only after she died, after we found out more about her life, that even her harshest detractors have recognized this, when the clues were right there in your face all along. Did nobody ever really sit down and listen to even a single verse of "Superstar", or "Goodbye to Love", or "Rainy Days and Mondays", or "I Need to Be In Love", or "Hurting Each Other", back in the day?

Of course, as in most things in life, I blame Richard.