ABSTRACT
By the late 1960s, folk singers Joan Baez, Buffy St Marie and Judy Collins had established solo careers, and in 1971 Carole King emerged as a performer on her highly successful album Tapestry. Its promotional single ‘It's Too Late/I Feel the Earth Move’ topped the charts, while ‘You've Got a Friend’ became a no. 1 hit for James Taylor, who also played on the album. It won four Grammy awards and remained in the charts for four years. Janis Ian (‘Society's Child’) and Carly Simon (‘You're So Vain’) were also enjoying success as solo artists, while Laura Nyro's 1969 album New York Tendaberry provided a brilliant example of jazz/rock fusions. It seemed, then, that the early 1970s was a propitious time for women to break into the solo market. Yet, as Joni Mitchell's album Blue reveals, being independent, creatively single minded and original continued to raise problems, not least those of grappling with a career while, at the same time, maintaining relationships.
