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Do you guys agree with Richard in the sense that the Carpenters shuold have stopped remaking oldies after the Now and Then remakes?

I think that the remake of A Kind of Hush was great...

I'd have preferred them to concentrate on more original stuff. Much of their post Horizon stuff was submitted by other songwriters to Richard for selection. From 76 onwards, they didn't have one real surefire single to speak of that John and Richard had written themselves. And it's not like Richard and John weren't capable of this!

But then that's partly because of all the problems that dogged them post 75 (health, change in musical trends etc). Shame they opted for 'easy' covers like Hush, Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, Can't Smile Without You, Desperado...

It's almost like 'oh such-and-such had a hit with this one, shall we try with it too?'. And in most cases they didn't really.

Now and Then was their indulgence album, I think. It worked well at the time because they were on the road and didn't have a lot of time, but also because they were performing similar sets on the tours, so a nice little promotion gimmick. That's where I think it should have ended...

Stephen

I tend to agree that after the Now and Then album which had a very good oldies medley, the remakes were rather poor especially after Horizon. Most of their work after Horizon was sub par and the remakes were especially poor. Richard even admitted that the song selection was not very good after 1975 and I agree with him on that one. Its a shame that after a great album like Horizon the Carpenters never really regained the quality in their music they had before. Still some good material but not near as good as their eary work.