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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent concept album shows Caroles social conscience, 29 Mar 2000
By A Customer
After the radio-friendly pop of her previous four albums (which included the world wide hit 'Tapestry'), 1973's 'Fantasy' marked a radical change of direction for Carole King. Instead of being a collection of relatively unrelated songs, 'Fantasy' is a concept album from start to finish, addressing the social problems of urban America. As such, it bears favourable comparison with Marvin Gaye's 1971 classic 'What's going on'. The concept of the album holds together successfully throughout, with a unity in musical style and at times quite a 'soulful' feel. Carole's musical involvement in the album was even greater than in its predecessors, as she was the sole composer, arranged the strings and horns, and played all keyboards. Many of the tracks link into one another, and the acoustic piano is so much the dominant instrument that it even forms the basis of the album cover design. However, the requirements of the 'concept' do not cause the quality of the songs to suffer, and many of the tracks stand up well in their own right, such as the r&b styled 'Believe in humanity', the latin-flavored 'Corazon', and the ballads 'Being at war with each other' and 'You light up my life'. Issued at a time when concept albums were all the rage, 'Fantasy' might well have been considered risky or even pretentious for an artist not previously associated with 'social conscience' music. However, Carole made a very creditable effort here, and proved that she amounted to much more than just a writer of three minute love songs. This must be one of Carole King's most neglected albums, and it compares very well to 'Tapestry' and 'Music'.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
In Fantasy this album would have got more recognition, 26 July 2005
By this point Carole had a string of hit albums and songs and sell out concerts and to bag it all up a few Grammys. At this point in her career she needed to break free from the idea she is a singer songwriter who writes nice, easy songs that do well in the charts and on radio. To do this she took a formula that was popular at the time, being political and sharing worries and wrongs with the world, the formula was doing wonders for artists like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. The album is more RnB as Carole has ever been and is very experimental from Caroles previous albums. Where eles are you gonna find a Jewish, Latin beat radio friendly song like Corizon? All the songs are less sing along then previous Carole songs but that still doen't make this album bad it makes it better in fact because it shows how serious Carole is as an artist. The album did go gold, got excellent reviews, went to number 6 a bit of a let down and spawned the hit Believe In Humanity and the minor hit You Light Up My life, not to be mistaken for Debbie Boones massive hit a few years later.
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