Carole King – It’s Too Late

Twenty Minutes Of Heartbreak On A Legal Pad

Released in April 1971, “It’s Too Late” entered the Billboard Hot 100 and climbed steadily through late spring. On June 19, it reached number one, where it stayed for five consecutive weeks. The single spent 19 weeks on the chart and was ranked the third biggest song of 1971 by Billboard. Toni Stern wrote the lyrics in twenty minutes on a legal pad after breaking up with James Taylor, though she’s never confirmed the song was about him. She brought the notepad to Carole King’s house, where King sat at the piano and composed the melody in under ninety minutes, often creating the exact arrangement that appeared on the final recording.

The track dominated both the Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts simultaneously, becoming King’s first and only number one hit as a performer. Its double A-side companion “I Feel the Earth Move” shared the top position, making it one of the most successful two-sided singles of the decade. The song helped propel Tapestry to fifteen consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard 200, beginning the same day “It’s Too Late” topped the singles chart. The album spent over 318 weeks on the chart, more than six years, and sold fourteen million copies in the United States alone. Music critic Robert Christgau called it the truest song about breaking up ever written, or at least the truest one AM radio was ready for. The song beat out George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” and James Taylor’s version of King’s own “You’ve Got a Friend” to win Record of the Year at the 1972 Grammy Awards.

King had spent the previous decade writing hits for other people alongside her then-husband Gerry Goffin, crafting number ones for The Shirelles, Bobby Vee, and Little Eva. After divorcing Goffin in 1968, she moved to California and settled in Laurel Canyon, where she met James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, and lyricist Toni Stern. Stern was a painter and poet from Los Angeles whose free-spirited California quality contrasted perfectly with King’s middle-class Brooklyn sensibility. Stern usually agonized over lyrics, but these came quickly after her relationship with Taylor ended. She handed the legal pad to King, who placed it on her piano stand and began working. King’s voice was in many ways the opposite of the sharp, polished singers she’d written for in the 1960s, warm and earnest rather than technically virtuosic, but that idiosyncratic quality made the song feel like an honest conversation instead of a performance.

Producer Lou Adler recorded “It’s Too Late” at A&M Studios in Los Angeles during the three-week sessions for Tapestry in January 1971, working simultaneously with James Taylor’s Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon in the same building. The arrangement featured King on acoustic piano, Curtis Amy on soprano saxophone, Danny Kortchmar on electric guitar and conga, Ralph Schuckett on electric piano, Charles Larkey on bass, and Joel O’Brien on drums. Kortchmar recalled being told to play something melancholy for the solo, using a Telecaster through a Princeton amp, and completing it in two or three passes. The band sat very close together cutting three tracks a day, playing live with chord sheets for most songs. For this one, Kortchmar had to absorb it by ear while King played at the piano, having no idea the song would become a number one record he’d hear in supermarkets and drug stores his whole life. The track ran 3 minutes and 51 seconds, long for a pop single at the time, but radio programmers couldn’t resist it.

“It’s Too Late” appeared on King’s second solo album Tapestry, released on February 10, 1971, and marking her transformation from behind-the-scenes songwriter to performing artist. The album included new versions of two Goffin and King classics, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”, alongside original compositions like “You’ve Got a Friend”, which James Taylor covered for his own number one hit just weeks after King’s song topped the charts. King’s debut album Writer had peaked at number 84 in 1970, making Tapestry‘s success feel like it came out of nowhere. The album won Grammy Awards for Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female, while “You’ve Got a Friend” won Song of the Year. King became the first solo female artist to win Record of the Year and the first woman to win Song of the Year at the same ceremony.

The BBC In Concert performance captured King at her most intimate and powerful, recorded on July 15, 1971, at BBC Television Centre in London and broadcast that October. Backed by members of Jo Mama including Danny “Kootch” Kortchmar on electric guitar and congas, Charles Larkey on bass, Joel O’Brien on drums, Ralph Schuckett on piano, and Abigail Haness on vocals, King delivered stripped-down versions of Tapestry tracks that many critics consider superior to the studio recordings. The In Concert series was produced by Stanley Dorfman, and the footage remained largely unavailable until it was released on Record Store Day Black Friday 2021 as a vinyl LP. King’s vocals were on point and the instruments deliberately minimal, with several tracks featuring just Carole and the piano. The performance offered rare insights into her personality through brief between-song chatter, revealing the warm, unassuming woman behind the era-defining songs. James Taylor even joined on acoustic guitar for “So Far Away”, making the concert a snapshot of the Laurel Canyon scene at its creative peak.

The song has been covered extensively across genres, with The Isley Brothers reaching number 39 on the R&B chart with their 1972 version from Brother, Brother, Brother. Billy Paul included it on his 1972 album 360 Degrees of Billy Paul, while The Stylistics recorded it for Round 2 the same year. British dance duo Quartz featuring Dina Carroll scored a number eight UK hit with it in 1991, introducing the song to the house music generation. Gloria Estefan released a faithful remake on her 1994 album Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, though critics noted it was one of those songs everybody feels they own and perhaps should be left alone. Amy Grant performed it on the 1995 all-star tribute album Tapestry Revisited: A Tribute to Carole King. The song appeared in films including The Lake House and Invincible, and Rolling Stone ranked it number 310 on their 2021 list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, up from number 469 in their 2004 ranking.

“It’s Too Late” remains the defining song of Carole King’s performing career and the track that launched the singer-songwriter movement into the mainstream. Music critic Dave Marsh heard implicit feminism in the lyrics because the woman leaves the man, remarking on the unusual maturity of the theme for early 1970s pop radio. The song captured something specific about the moment when relationships end not with drama but with quiet resignation, when both people finally admit that something inside has died and they can’t fake it anymore. King told CBS This Morning in 2012 that the two most popular stories she hears from fans involve conceiving children to “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” and how “It’s Too Late” got them through marital splits, always adding that the lyrics are by Toni Stern, not her. Stern herself never revealed who inspired the song, telling author Sheila Weller that she doesn’t kiss and tell. The Broadway musical Beautiful: The Carole King Musical opened in 2014 and won two Tony Awards, keeping the song alive for new generations. King entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 alongside Goffin and was inducted again in 2021 as a solo performer, cementing her status as one of the most influential artists in pop music history. Twenty minutes on a legal pad, ninety minutes at the piano, and five weeks at number one proved that sometimes the most honest songs come from the simplest creative process.