Created by Matt Zoller Seitz
Directed by Judith Carter
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
Haruki Murakami
Photo by Justin Campbell on Unsplash

Lead Sister: The Story of Karen Carpenter by Lucy O'Brien (Hardcover, USED)

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As one of the biggest-selling acts of the 1970s, the Carpenters are celebrated for their melodic pop and unforgettable hits like “Close to You,” “Yesterday,” and “Top of the World.” Though Karen Carpenter s rightly recognized as one of the greatest singers in popular music, the tragedy of her early death in 1983 at the young age of just thirty-two sometimes overshadows her incredible achievements. She has often been portrayed as a victim, controlled by her family and exploited by the music industry.

Forty years after her death, this biography reframes her life and legacy as a pioneering woman with her own vision and agency. With exclusive interviews with friends, musicians, and collaborators, bestselling author Lucy O’Brien explores Karen’s contributions as a singer, drummer, arranger, and producer, and traces the roots of the Carpenters’ iconic sound. Lead Sister also honors Karen’s triumphs in the face of her struggle with anorexia, providing contemporary perspectives on eating disorders and mental health. Despite the chronic nature of her illness, Karen Carpenter was, above all, a creative, dedicated, and assured artist whose music delivers an emotional resonance that has transcended generations―and that is how she should be remembered.

REVIEW

“Music journalist O’Brien reconstructs the life of 1970s and early ’80s pop star Carpenter, from the ‘intense musical creativity’ and sonorous voice that propelled her to fame to the industry and cultural pressures she battled and the anorexia that eventually contributed to her death in 1983.… Mining Carpenter’s music, as well as original interviews with those who knew her, O’Brien paints a nuanced portrait of both an inimitable, culture-defining artist and a highly visible casualty of the music industry’s ‘relentless promotion’ of women as uniformly thin, ‘saleable commodities.’ Carpenter’s fans will be rapt.” ―Publishers Weekly

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lucy O’Brien is the bestselling author of She Bop: The Definitive History of Women in Popular Music, It Takes Blood And Guts, Dusty: The Classic Biography, and Madonna: Like An Icon. She has contributed to Q, Mojo, NME, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Cosmopolitan, and Marie Claire and is also a TV & radio broadcaster. She co-produced Righteous Babes, the Channel 4 film about women in rock and scripted the BBC Radio 2 series She Bop.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 15, 2023
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 153818446X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1538184462
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.3 x 1.3 x 9.25 inches

About Our Store

MZS.Press is the online arts bookstore founded by author, critic, and filmmaker Matt Zoller Seitz and Directed by Judith Carter. It offers new, used, signed, collectible, and rare books on film, TV, music, photography, and the visual arts. The store was launched in 2019 on a different platform and has expanded to incorporate arts books published by MZSPress's private imprint: titles currently include Seitz's The Deadwood Bible: A Lie Agreed Upon and Dreams of Deadwood, about the HBO Western, and Walter Chaw's A Walter Hill Film.

Our deepest wish is to promote, encourage, and distribute work by small presses, academic presses, and individuals. Extraordinary work tends to get swallowed up on giant platforms like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The titles featured here are personally selected by a group of curators and advisors, including Seitz and an array of critics, artists, journalists, educators, publishers, and arts mavens who are known for their ability to suss out what Seitz's jazz musician dad liked to call "the good sh*t."

About the Partners

Matt Zoller Seitz

Critic, Author, Filmmaker, MZS Press Creator

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large and film critic of RogerEbert.com; Features Writer for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, Contributing Writer for D Magazine and Texas Highways as well as finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism. His writing on film and TV has appeared in Sight and Sound, The New York Times, Salon.com, The New Republic and Rolling Stone. Seitz is the founder and original editor of the influential film blog The House Next Door, now a part of Slant Magazine.

Seitz has written, narrated, edited or produced over a hundred hours’ worth of video essays about cinema history and style for The Museum of the Moving Image, Salon.com and Vulture, among other outlets such as Texas Highways and AARP. His five-part 2009 video essay Wes Anderson: The Substance of Style was spun off into the hardcover book The Wes Anderson Collection. This book and its follow-up, The Wes Anderson Collection: Grand Budapest Hotel were New York Times bestsellers.

Other Seitz books include the New York Times bestsellers The Sopranos Sessions and Mad Men Carousel; TV (The Book), The Deadwood Bible: A Lie Agreed Upon, The Wes Anderson Collection: The French Dispatch and the new The Wes Anderson Collection: Asteroid City. He is also an interviewer, moderator, and film programmer who has curated and hosted film and TV presentations for the Museum of the Moving Image, IFC Center, San Francisco's Roxie Cinema, and other venues. In October 2024 he brought the legendary filmmaker Oliver Stone back to Dallas for a historic return to the city and the Texas Theatre, considered the biggest film event of Dallas in 2024 by Dallas Observer!

Judith Carter was in the Upscale and Luxury Hospitality Industry for most of her life. In 2004 she had a beautiful baby boy with Special Needs and put the pause on her career until 2017 to dedicate herself to him and then others, assisting and volunteering as a legal advocate ensuring the best medical care, evaluations and educations for Special Needs children and their families.

Matt and Judith were family friends for over 20 years. She was there with her family in support when his wife Jen passed away suddenly in 2006. Then just 6 weeks later while Matt was in Dallas; he and his Father, Dave, and Step-Mother, Genie, were there as support, when Judith was alone and her son received the first of many diagnoses that changed the trajectory of their lives. So it made sense in the turbulent year of 2020, Matt asked Judith to take over running the online store that has become MZS.press. The rest as they say is, "Their"-story.

The Arts Bookstore of the Internet

The Arts Bookstore of the Internet

Created by Matt Zoller Seitz
Directed by Judith Carter
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
Haruki Murakami
Photo by Justin Campbell on Unsplash

Lead Sister: The Story of Karen Carpenter by Lucy O'Brien (Hardcover, USED)

The Arts Bookstore of the Internet

The Arts Bookstore of the Internet

Created by Matt Zoller Seitz Directed by Judith Carter“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”Haruki MurakamiPhoto by Justin Campbell on Unsplash

Lead Sister: The Story of Karen Carpenter by Lucy O'Brien (Hardcover, USED)

About Our Store

About the Partners

Created by Matt Zoller Seitz
Directed by Judith Carter
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
Haruki Murakami
Photo by Justin Campbell on Unsplash