Karen and Richard Carpenter have taken the music world by storm with their beautiful "Close to You" million seller, and they are on their way to repeating that success with their current "We've Only Just Begun." Their smooth blend of voices is evident throughout this LP, which includes both those hits and they should skyrocket up the best selling album charts. Another gem is their treatment of "Baby It's You."

- Billboard, 1970.

Bonus Reviews!

Further reading on Super Seventies RockSite!: Album Review: Carpenters Album Review: A Song For You Album Review: The Singles 1969-1973 Single Review: "(They Long To Be) Close To You" Richard Carpenter: In His Own Words

This was the Carpenters' breakthrough album. Its title track was their first major hit, and it spawned the followup "We've Only Just Begun," which has been used in countless weddings since. The album also contained various pop covers of '60s hits like "Help!" and "Baby It's You," reinforcing the group's implied ties to rock while fostering the birth of a new generation of easy listening music. This album won the Carpenters a Best New Artist Grammy for 1970. * * * *

- William Ruhlmann , The All-Music Guide to Rock, 1995.

Close to You (1970), with "We've Only Just Begun" and "I'll Never Fall in Love Again," and A Song for You (1972), with "Hurting Each Other" and the great "Goodbye to Love," with its brilliant outro of fuzz guitar solo over massed oohs-n-aahs, have the same dewy freshness as Carpenters (1971), though with less consistent material. * * * 1/2

- Steve Holtje, Musichound Rock: The Essential Album Guide, 1996.

Karen Carpenter sang and drummed; her brother Richard arranged their lushly melodic music. Both contributed to their thoroughly wholesome image. "It's like we're Pat Boone, only a little cleaner," Richard lamented to Rolling Stone in 1974. "As if all we do all day is drink milk, eat apple pie and take showers. I don't even like milk." Close to You, their second album, has two of their best ballads: "(They Long to Be) Close to You" and "We've Only Just Begun." In the early Seventies, the Carpenters epitomized the mainstream, but now their influence is audible in cooler, slightly less-clean indie bands: the Cardigans, Stereolab and "chamber pop" acts such as Belle and Sebastian.

Close to You was chosen as the 175th greatest album of all time by the editors of Rolling Stone magazine in Dec. 2003.

- Rolling Stone, 12/11/03.

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