My song today is ‘I Won’t Last a Day Without You’. On the 13th of April, 1974, Karen and Richard Carpenter had their 14th single enter the Billboard chart. It did so at Number.70 and was the highest new entry of the week. ‘I Won’t Last A Day Without You’ was, in many ways, a curious choice for a single because it came from their album,’ A Song For You’ that had come out almost two years earlier and had already included three big hit singles. On February 4th, 1983, Karen Carpenter died in California, USA after succumbing to heart failure, brought on by her long, unpublicised struggle with anorexia.
The death of Karen Carpenter ended one of the most successful 'brother and sister' singing/musical partnerships in the world. The brother/sister relationship had come to rely upon the ‘dependency’ of each. The brother/sister relationship had been both blessed and cursed alike since their childhood years, until it had reached that suicidal signpost of one’s journey of life, with the brother and sister not being able to live with each other in their life or not being able to sustain life without each other!
They do say that ‘too close’ a sibling relationship can develop into one where the dependency of one person upon the other is actively encouraged. Such relationships can smother healthy love, and cripple individuality.
Love and peace
Bill xxx