“Rainy Days and Mondays” (Carpenters)

Today’s classic song of the day for a Monday morning is “Rainy Days and Mondays” by the Carpenters. This soft ballad was released as a single in April of 1971 and rose all the way to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on the Adult Listening chart.

“Rainy Days and Mondays” was written by the team of Paul Williams (words) and Roger Nichols (music). They also wrote “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “I Won’t Last a Day Without You” for the Carpenters, as well as numerous hits for Three Dog Night, Helen Reddy, Anne Murray, Barbra Streisand, and others. Mr. Williams also wrote, with Kenneth Ascher, a previous classic song of the day, “Rainbow Connection,” from The Muppet Movie.

After they wrote “Rainy Days and Mondays,” Williams and Nichols sent a demo to Richard Carpenter and he jumped at it. Richard and his sister Karen recorded the track a few weeks before Karen’s 21st birthday but her interpretation was wise beyond her years. The session musicians were the normal crew used on all the Carpenters’ records at the time, including Joe Osborn on bass and Hal Blaine on drums. Richard Carpenter played piano, Tommy Morgan played harmonica (he was also the harmonica player on the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations”), and Bob Messenger contributed the tenor sax solo.

The song perfectly describes what a rainy Monday morning feels like:

What I’ve got they used to call the blues
Nothin’ is really wrong
Feelin’ like I don’t belong
Walkin’ around
Some kind of lonely clown
Rainy days and Mondays always get me down

Karen Carpenter perfectly sells the lyrics with her silky smooth vocals and her brother Richard’s vocal arrangement is the icing on the cake. This is a terrific piece of music, emblematic of the best of soft rock or adult contemporary music in the early ’70s.

And here’s your bonus of the day, the Carpenters lip synching “Rainy Days and Mondays” on The Johnny Cash Show on March 24, 1971. Karen mimes both singing and playing drums on this one!