Benign Slab Of Oppression: “Hurting Each Other” by The Carpenters

One of the occupational hazards of writing a blog based on the charts is that sooner or later you’re going to end up writing about the same music, over and over. The Carpenters ended 1971 and begin 1972, hence becoming the first act since The Beatles to appear here with consecutive entries, and much more than Creedence, their omnipresence is becoming a tad oppressive – and we’re not done with them here yet. I have virtually nothing left to say about The Carpenters or their music; suffice it to mention that “Hurting Each Other” is a cover of a 1965 song which has been interpreted by everyone from Chad Allen and The Expressions to The Walker Brothers – although Richard seems to have been influenced by the vocal arrangements on Ruby and The Romantics’ 1969 recording. The pain remains suppressed, while the emotional low is so unbearable you could put this out on Bella Union and get a Guardian five-star review tomorrow. To paraphrase Karen, can’t we just STOP?

Date Record Made Number Two: 26 February 1972

Number Of Weeks At Number Two: 2

Record At Number One: “Without You” by Nilsson

UK Chart Position: None

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Threads Of Alligator Lizards In The Air: “Purple Rain” by Prince and The Revolution

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In many ways, this is a strange and rather old-fashioned song for the mid-seventies, even though the events which it describes were then only a year old. The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was for over seventeen years a Great Lakes freighter, transporting pellets of iron ore from mines near Duluth, Minnesota, to iron works in Detroit, Toledo and other Great Lake ports. On the afternoon of 9 November 1975, under the command of its Canadian captain Ernest M McSorley, the ship set sail from Lake Superior, bound for Detroit. But an early storm broke the following day; the ship filled up with water and then capsized – or possibly split – and sank, and although the wreck of the ship was found a few months later, none of the bodies of its twenty-nine-strong crew has ever been found. It sank in Canadian waters. Lightfoot read an article about the disaster in Newsweek , which helped unlock his long-standing writer’s block and inspire the song. He tells the story as simply as possible, though acco

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