On This Day in 1971, Carole King Started a 15-Week Stay at No. 1 with One of the Greatest Albums of All Time

On this day (June 19) in 1971, Carole King topped the Billboard 200 with Tapestry. It retained the No. 1 position for 15 consecutive weeks, a record that still stands. It stayed on the chart for a total of 318 weeks, which comes out to more than six years. Only Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon spent more time on the chart. The album brought King a stack of Grammy Awards and has been certified 14x Platinum. More importantly, the LP opened doors for countless singer/songwriters and made her one of the most influential artists of the 1970s.

King was a star songwriter long before she recorded Tapestry. She wrote “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” when she was 17 years old. The Shirelles made it the first No. 1 single by a Black girl group. Later, she partnered with her then-husband, Gerry Goffin, to write some of the biggest hits of the 1960s. Notable Goffin-King compositions include “Up on the Roof,” “The Loco-Motion,” and “(You Make Me Feel) Like a Natural Woman.”

[RELATED: 3 Songs Carole King Wrote That Changed Other Artists’ Careers]

In 1970. King released her debut album, Writer, made up of Goffin-King songs. It peaked at No. 84 on the Billboard 200.

Carole King Went Against the Grain

As Rob LeDonne points out in his piece for Grammy.com, singer/songwriters were incredibly rare in pop music when Carole King recorded Tapestry. Songwriters were “faceless names behind the scenes” who “were neither accepted nor welcome” on the stage or behind a microphone. That was beginning to change when she left New York for Los Angeles in the early 1970s, though. She found a place among other like-minded artists, such as James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, in Laurel Canyon.

Before this time, she would have been content to remain one of those faceless names, she revealed in a 2006 interview. “I have James Taylor to thank for sort of nudging me out in front and teaching me by example,” she said. “He set the stage so the audience would be receptive to me. He told them about all the songs that I had written and [said] now she’s going to do one of them for you,” King explained. That night, during the concert that she said changed her life, she performed “Up on the Roof.”

“They already knew the song, they already liked the song. They already liked James. So, unless I really screwed up, they were probably going to like me. And, I didn’t screw up.”

Balancing Life and Stardom

Tapestry launched Carole King to stardom and established the singer/songwriter genre that dominated the 1970s.

King won four Grammy Awards for Tapestry and its songs. The album brought her Album of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. “It’s Too Late” won Record of the Year and “You’ve Got a Friend” won Song of the Year. She was the first solo female artist to win Record of the Year and the first woman to win Song of the Year. At the time, no one had ever taken home four trophies during one ceremony. These awards came with the record-setting chart success and massive sales. King managed to stay grounded through it all, though.

“I kind of pushed it away,” King said when asked how she dealt with the sudden and overwhelming success of Tapestry. “It was really important to me to keep a grip on life. My life, at the time, included a marriage and the two children I had from Gerry Goffin. I was married to my bass player, Charlie Larkey, and expecting my third–Charlie’s first–child,” she explained. “So, I busied myself with that and kept the fame and all of the things around success at bay. I think I did that successfully.”

Since its release, Tapestry has been included on several lists of the greatest albums of all time. More importantly, it allowed Carole King to inspire generations of artists.

Featured Image by Jim McCrary/Redferns

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