Carole King was born on February 9, 1942. King is a singer-songwriter, best known for the many pop hits she wrote in the 1960s (with her then-husband, Gerry Goffin), and for her 1971 album Tapestry.
King and Goffin met in college, and were married in 1959. During the 1960s, they were a dominant songwriting team, writing more than 30 Top 40 hits, including four #1 songs: The Shirelles' "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," Bobby Vee's "Take Good Care of My Baby," Little Eva's "The Loco-Motion," and Steve Lawrence's "Go Away Little Girl." The last two of those songs are among the few songs to be #1 hits twice, for two different artists, with Grand Funk Railroad reviving "The Loco-Motion" and Donny Osmond bringing back "Go Away Little Girl." King recorded a few singles during this period, but only 1962's "It Might As Well Rain Until September", also written with Goffin, had any success.
The Goffin-King partnership, both personal and professional, was over by 1968. King moved to Los Angeles, where she formed a trio called The City. They recorded one album, Now That Everything's Been Said, which disappeared quickly, in part because of turmoil at the record company. The City disbanded in 1969.
King released her first solo album, Writer, in 1970, to critical praise and mild commercial success. Her second album, Tapestry, was another story. Tapestry was the #1 album for 15 weeks, and stayed on the charts for more than 6 years. It was a mix of new songs and some Goffin/King songs that were already familiar from earlier versions (most notably "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" and "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman," which had become a signature song for Aretha Franklin). King won four Grammy Awards for the album, including Song of the Year, the first time a female songwriter had won that award.
For the rest of the 1970s, King recorded an album a year, and most of them were hits. She took an unusual detour in 1975, collaborating with Maurice Sendak on Really Rosie, a musical for children. It was originally produced as an animated TV special, with King voicing the title character. They later expanded it to a stage musical, which had an off-Broadway run in 1980 and remains popular with children's theater groups.
King ended the decade by returning to her roots. The album Pearls was a collection of Goffin/King songs from the 1960s, and King's version of "One Fine Day" (originally a hit for the Chiffons in 1963) was her last Top 40 single.
King continues to record a new album every few years. They include a 2010 concert recording with her long-time friend James Taylor (Live at the Troubadour) and a 2011 Christmas album (A Holiday Carole). She also still writes new songs, and frequently collaborates with younger artists. Mariah Carey's "If It's Over" was co-written with King, as was "Torre de Marfil," by Colombian singer-songwriter Soraya.
The importance of King's career, both as a songwriter and as a performer, is evident in the number of recorded tributes to her work. Rod Stewart, Aretha Franklin, and the Bee Gees are among the artists who took part in 1995's Tapestry Revisited, which focuses specifically on the songs from Tapestry. An assortment of Australian pop stars cover a wider range of King's songs on Beautiful: A Tribute, and former Monkee Micky Dolenz performs his favorites on King for a Day. The 2014 Broadway musical Beautiful integrated two dozen of her songs into a telling of King's life story.
King tells that story herself in her memoir, A Natural Woman (e-book , e-audio, print, audio), and in the documentary Carole King: Natural Woman. Sheila Weller looks at the music of the late 1960s and early 1970s from a female-centered point of view, focusing specifically on King, Carly Simon, and Joni Mitchell in Girls Like Us (e-book, e-audio, print).
In addition to the albums linked above, more of Carole King's music is available for streaming at Freegal and Hoopla.