ABSTRACT
The move from tonic to a subdominant seventh chord is a well-worn cliche in popular music. It is a harmonic fingerprint of sentimental moments on Carole King's Tapestry (1971), playing a major role in the enrichment on that much celebrated album of a sensitive female singer-songwriter persona and in particular her exploration of a nexus of emotions surrounding homeliness. By the late 1960s, King had long established herself, primarily in collaboration with lyricist Gerry Goffin, as one of the most successful songwriters of her generation. But she only very reluctantly emerged as a public performer of her material. By the 1970s, the solo piano had become established by singer-songwriters like King as a sonic signature evoking ‘genuineness of feeling, a sign of authenticity in the song's sentiment’, a symbolic function also attaching to Taylor's instrument, the solo acoustic guitar.
