This is part IV of my series to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Carole King’s Tapestry album, which is coming up on February 10. The three previous parts covered the first four tunes on side A: I Feel the Earth Move, So Far Away, It’s Too Late and Home Again. Here’s the fifth track aptly titled Beautiful.
Citing Carole’s 2012 auto-biography A Natural Woman, Wikipedia notes she did not consciously attempt to write “Beautiful” but it came to her spontaneously. It stemmed from her realization while riding the New York City subway that the way she perceived others reflected how she herself felt. She has also stated that because it came to her spontaneously, she initially didn’t realize some of the professional details of the song, such as the lack of rhyme in the refrain, which if she was writing the song consciously she would have included.
Beautiful was covered by Barbara Streisand, among other artists. She recorded it for her 1971 studio album Barbra Joan Streisand. Beautiful also became the title track of the musical Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. It started with a try-out in San Francisco in October 2013 before moving to New York’s Broadway where it was shown from January 2014 until October 2019. There was also an original production in London from February 2015 to August 2017. In addition, there have been various tours of the musical in the U.S., UK and Australia.
Sources: Wikipedia; YouTube
Christian's Music Musings 
This could have been a single at the time…not a wasted track on the album.
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I think this is my least favourite track – mainly the lyrics don’t work for me.
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Admittedly, I tend to pay more attention to the music than the lyrics, even though unlike when I was 7 or 8, I now understand English, most of the time! 🙂
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Me too. It’s my least favorite track. It’s the only one that sounds like an artifact of that era. Its the only one that sounds kind of dated because of the hippie lyrics. The actual music on it is still pretty good though. I like the drums and piano.
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„Tapestry“ ist der Höhepunkt von Carole King. Sie repräsentiert hier eine neue, sanfte Welle in der Rockmusik Anfang der 70er Jahre. Die Songs sind – oder zumindest wirken sie so – erwachsen, intelligent, kultiviert und entspannt.
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