Carpenters – Rainy Days And Mondays

“Rainy Days and Mondays” Single by Carpenters from the album Carpenters
B-side “Saturday”
Released April 23, 1971
Label A&M
Songwriters Paul Williams, Roger Nichols
Producer Jack Daugherty
Charted No.2 in US, No.62 in UK

After they wrote “Rainy Days and Mondays,” Williams and Nichols sent a demo to Richard Carpenter and he jumped at it. Richard and his sister Karen recorded the track a few weeks before Karen’s 21st birthday but her interpretation was wise beyond her years. The session musicians were the normal crew used on all the Carpenters’ records at the time, including Joe Osborn on bass and Hal Blaine on drums. Richard Carpenter played piano, Tommy Morgan played harmonica (he was also the harmonica player on the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations”), and Bob Messenger contributed the tenor sax solo.

The song perfectly describes what a rainy Monday morning feels like:

What I’ve got they used to call the blues
Nothin’ is really wrong
Feelin’ like I don’t belong
Walkin’ around
Some kind of lonely clown
Rainy days and Mondays always get me down

Karen Carpenter perfectly sells the lyrics with her silky smooth vocals and her brother Richard’s vocal arrangement is the icing on the cake. This is a terrific piece of music, emblematic of the best of soft rock or adult contemporary music in the early ’70s.