1975 · Behind the Songs
Neil Sedaka’s Chopin-haunted ballad, Phil Cody’s divorce, and the vocal Richard Carpenter called one of Karen’s greatest.
Of all the unlikely journeys a song can take, “Solitaire” may be the most winding. It began with Neil Sedaka thinking about Frederic Chopin, continued with lyricist Phil Cody nursing a fresh divorce over a deck of cards in his kitchen, passed through the hands of the Searchers and Andy Williams, and finally landed in 1975 on the Carpenters’ album Horizon — where Karen Carpenter sang it so completely that her own brother, who had never loved the song, called it one of her greatest performances. Released as a single on July 18, 1975, with “Love Me for What I Am” on the B-side, it reached No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the Easy Listening chart — the duo’s twelfth of fifteen chart-toppers in that format. Sedaka’s original ran five minutes and two seconds; the Carpenters made it feel both longer and shorter — longer because every line lands, shorter because you never want it to end. A song about a man playing cards alone became, in Karen’s voice, a monument to loneliness.
Chopin, Roberta Flack, and a divorce
The music came first, and it came from an unlikely muse. Sedaka built the chorus around the sweep of Frederic Chopin — the romantic piano, the long melodic lines — and shaped the verses in the spirit of Roberta Flack, whose quiet intensity was everywhere in the early seventies. He recorded it in June 1972 at Strawberry Studios in Stockport, England, backed by Lol Creme, Kevin Godley, and Graham Gouldman — three musicians who would soon become 10cc — with Eric Stewart engineering and Sedaka himself producing. The album was Solitaire, on RCA Victor. Then Phil Cody, Sedaka’s lyricist, went through a divorce — and the song found its subject. Cody wrote about a man who had lost his love through his own indifference, dealing himself hand after hand while, as the lyric puts it, life goes on around him everywhere. He had played solitaire himself as a way through the wreckage, and both men later described the writing of the song as a spiritual experience.
The long road to Karen
Before the Carpenters ever touched it, “Solitaire” had already lived several lives. The Searchers released the first single version in February 1973. Andy Williams took it up that autumn and carried it to No. 4 in the UK, No. 1 in South Africa, and No. 23 on the American Easy Listening chart, on an album produced by Richard Perry. Richard Carpenter knew the song from both the Sedaka and Williams versions — and, by his own admission, he was never crazy about it. What he was crazy about was what his sister could do with it. The Carpenters cut it for Horizon, their sixth studio album, released in 1975, and the single version added a guitar lead between the first verse and the chorus, a small lift for radio. Richard would later assess Karen’s performance as one of her greatest — high praise from a man who heard every take she ever sang.
The chart journey
Released on July 18, 1975, “Solitaire” climbed to No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100 — modest by Carpenters standards, their least successful single since “Bless the Beasts and Children” back in 1971. But the Easy Listening chart told a different story: No. 1, the duo’s twelfth of fifteen toppers in the format that had always been their stronghold. Around the world the pattern held — No. 12 in Canada, No. 3 on Canada’s Adult Contemporary chart, No. 32 in the UK, No. 61 in Australia, No. 6 in New Zealand, No. 15 in Cash Box, No. 44 in Japan. The song did not conquer the world; it seeped into it, the way its subject seeps into a quiet room. A single about a man alone with his cards was never going to be a party record. It was a 2 a.m. record, and 2 a.m. records have their own kind of immortality.
The company it keeps
“Solitaire” attracted singers the way a good story attracts readers. Elvis Presley recorded it for his 1976 album From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee. Shirley Bassey, Johnny Mathis, and Nana Mouskouri all took their turns. Sheryl Crow sang it on the 1994 tribute album If I Were a Carpenter. And in 2004, Clay Aiken carried it to No. 4 in the United States, introducing Sedaka and Cody’s ballad to a generation that had never heard of Strawberry Studios. Every version finds something different in the cards — but they all orbit the same still center: a person, a table, a game with no opponent, and the terrible freedom of having no one left to lose to.
What to listen for
Listen for the stillness. Karen sings “Solitaire” without a wasted breath, and Richard’s production gives her acres of space — the arrangement never hurries, because the song’s subject has nowhere to be. Listen for the Chopin in the chorus, the way the melody lifts and falls like a nocturne, and for the Roberta Flack in the verses, that conversational intimacy. Listen for the single version’s guitar lead between the first verse and the chorus, the one small concession to radio. And listen for what Richard heard: a singer taking a song she did not write, from writers she never met, about a card game she may never have played — and making it sound like her own autobiography.