You're Not Really T/here:
Authorship, Nostalgia & the Absent 'Superstar'
Freya Jarman-Ivens
Lecturer in Music, University of Liverpool, England
The 1994 tribute album If I Were a Carpenter features a host of Carpenters-wannabes covering the most famous of the sibling duo's tunes. The album presents a variety of musical styles, in which the characteristically smooth timbres and intimate harmonies of Karen and Richard — emergent on Offering (1969; re-released as Ticket to Ride), exemplified in 'Intermission' on A Song For You (1972), and saturating their work by Now And Then (1973) — are sometimes imitated, but more often replaced by other variations of sonic nuance, both instrumental and vocal. Intriguingly, though, a number of the songs on the album were not written or first recorded by the Carpenters, although they have since become most associated with the pair. Songs on the album that fall into this category include 'Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft' (first released by Canadian group KLAATU on 3:47 EST, also known as KLAATU, (1976)), 'We've Only Just Begun' (originally sung by Paul Williams for a television commercial), and 'Close To You' (first recorded by Richard Chamberlain in 1963). Certainly the last two of these are indelibly associated with Richard and Karen, and this speaks loudly of the extent to which recordings allow a song to be linked with a performance. This point seems to illustrate well the potential intensity of association between an artist and a song, in spite of any prior or subsequent history, and it is this particular relationship that I want to explore here.
The notion of authorship in popular music is a complex one, and one that deserves continuing attention. Will Straw has usefully outlined and explored many of the prevailing issues surrounding 'the author' as a figure in popular music, summarising, "Typically ... we evaluate a musical recording or concert as the output of a single individual or integrated group" (1999, 200). What is significant, however, is that the author in music operates very differently according to the kind of music being discussed: it is Beethoven's symphony, but Elvis's 'Jailhouse Rock', and jazz standards are another question altogether. The significant point of intervention here may be the mode of circulation of the piece in question. It is understood that a classical work circulates in printed form, with its composer's name on the score, for consumption, interpretation, and recording by individuals and integrated groups. In popular music forms, however, the recording is precisely the dominant object that circulates, and the specifics of the recorded interpretation come to form the basis of the song as it circulates. In particular, then, the question that forms the basis of this article is that of how specific recordings can contribute to the perceived authorship of a song. That is to say, although there is a sense in which an artist or group may be seen in a general sense to 'own' a song — to have authority over it — it is in individual performances, and usually specifically recorded performances, that the perceived ownership is authorised. So, what we hear in cover versions may often be a cover of a cover, as an 'impostor original' becomes solidified over time as a point of musical reference, to the extent that its initial status as a cover is forgotten.
Although many of the songs on If I Were a Carpenter engage playfully with the versions released by the Carpenters themselves (for instance 'Goodbye To Love' or 'Top of the World'), I have chosen one song in particular as an interesting case study: 'Superstar', recorded for the tribute album by Sonic Youth. This song has undergone extensive and varied treatment throughout its recording history.[1] Yet despite the variations, and as significant as those variations may be, what stands out with respect to 'Superstar' is that, in its post-Carpenters recording history, artists have mostly seemed to take the Carpenters' recording as a major point of reference, over and above the pre-Carpenters recordings by each of the song's authors. In this article, I will argue that the Carpenters' recording maintains a significant and conspicuous influence on post-Carpenters recordings of the song, an influence which cuts across the different genres in which the song has been recast, and that this influence is achieved not only through melodic features, but also through the construction of kinds of nostalgia. The song as an ongoing concept, then, is one example of the cover-of-a-cover, a kind of hall of mirrors effect of losing a sense of 'original' (as tenuous as that may ever be).
'Superstar': the first two years, 1970-1972
One of the first set of discourses to be negotiated in considering the recording history of 'Superstar' is certainly that surrounding ideas of authorship. As I have noted, the Carpenters were neither the composers of the song in its initial form, or the first to record it. The composers — Leon Russell and Bonnie Bramlett — did both record the song, but on separate occasions, and with an interesting chronological relationship to the Carpenters' recording. Russell's was the first recording, in 1970, on Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen (1970), with Russell as bandleader and pianist and Rita Coolidge providing the vocals. Bramlett provided the lead vocals in a version recorded in 1972 for the album D & B Together (by Bonnie and Delaney, a band formed by Bramlett and her husband). Notably, this was after the Carpenters had achieved widespread success with their single release in 1971. Although the performance involving Leon Russell preceded the Carpenters' cover, it was apparently not that first recording which inspired the siblings to record the song. Instead, a television performance of the song by Bette Midler on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in October 1971 was their point of reference (Coleman 1994, 105). Midler subsequently recorded the track for The Divine Miss M, which was released in 1972.[2] By 1972, then, the song as conception had already achieved a problematic status as something authored. The Carpenters' success with their version, surpassing the other three early recordings, is probably central to subsequent interpretations of the song. Starting with a comparative analysis of these first four recordings (by Russell in 1970, Bramlett in 1972, Midler in 1971-72, and the Carpenters in 1971), I will argue in this article that a noteworthy variation on authorial influence emerges through post-Carpenters recordings of 'Superstar': post-Carpenters recordings have varying senses of the authorial presence of the Carpenters — not Russell or Bramlett, the composers, but the musicians and producer responsible for one particular version; and not Russell, Cocker, and Coolidge as the first recorders, but those involved in a subsequent recording.
A few key musical details mark the Carpenters' recording of 'Superstar' as different from the Cocker/Coolidge recording and that by Bette Midler. First, the introduction on the Carpenters' recording is quite distinctive. Bonnie and Delaney's recording cuts straight into the first verse, and the Russell/Cocker/Coolidge version features a simple, undulating pattern played by Leon Russell, which seems to prioritise setting the tonal region. The Carpenters' version, in contrast, features eight bars of melodic introductory material which sets the mood as well as the tonality. Like Midler's recording, the Carpenters take the first three notes of the vocal line as a starting point, but whereas Midler's pianist then moves back to reiterate the resolution of the suspended supertonic (Figure 1.1), in Richard Carpenter's arrangement an oboist moves on through the next three notes of the vocal line (Figure 1.2). The oboe's line then sweeps downwards and pauses momentarily, before sustained chords played by horns lead into a descending bass guitar motif that immediately precedes the beginning of the first verse.
Figure 1.1: Introduction to Bette Midler's recording of 'Superstar'
Figure 1.2: Introduction to the Carpenters' recording of 'Superstar'
The next crucial musical detail that helps determine the presence of the Carpenters' influence on post-Carpenters recordings of the song is a trumpet fill-in that appears in the choruses:
Figure 1.3: Fill-in in the Carpenters' recording of 'Superstar'
This fill-in recurs in several of the post-Carpenters recordings, and is a useful marker of the influence of that recording in the history of the song, since it does not appear prior to their recording.
This is far from an exhaustive list of the musical aspects that mark the Carpenters' recording of 'Superstar', although they may be the most aurally striking. One other significant feature that I would like to draw attention to, because I sense its reappearance in different forms over the song's recording history, is the infusion of nostalgia into the song. The formation and deployment of nostalgia within and around music is a complicated question, as nostalgia may be both constructed by and attached to pieces of music.[3] Indeed, the very idea of nostalgia also has multiple forms and functions. Svetlana Boym has proposed two ways in which nostalgia manifests itself: restorative nostalgia and reflective nostalgia. These are not to be understood as "absolute types," she writes, "but rather tendencies, ways of giving shape and meaning to longing" (2001, 41). These two tendencies, then, are distinguishable by their relationships with the past: "Restorative nostalgia manifests itself in total reconstructions of monuments of the past, while reflective nostalgia lingers on ruins, the patina of time and history, in the dreams of another place and another time" (41). Restorative nostalgia, for Boym, thus has a more dynamic potential to it, insofar as it is concerned with how to rethink the present in light of images of or ideas about the past. A similar approach is adopted by Pickering and Keightley in their call to rethink nostalgia as "not only a search for ontological security in the past, but also as a means of taking one's bearings for the road ahead in the uncertainty of the present" (2006, 921). To talk about nostalgia and music raises similar questions of the object and purpose of the nostalgia, and this is especially pertinent in the consideration of cover versions, because of the ongoing presence of a 'monument' of the past in the form of something taken as an 'original'. In recordings of 'Superstar' there are two primary modes of nostalgic relations: the first, a narrative nostalgia, a nostalgia within the song, a longing for the lost, absent, maybe-never-had superstar; the second, an objectifying nostalgia, a nostalgia for the song, with the song as a remembered object that is being re-presented. This latter kind of nostalgia, then, may hold the potential for progressiveness similar to that held by Boym's 'restorative nostalgia', as I will suggest below. Introducing further layers of complexity, though, are two factors: first, the 'monument' of the 'original' turns out to be a cover itself; and second, at the same time, and possibly as some kind of response to this dubious 'monument', the sense of nostalgia for the song seems to look to the song as an abstract or mythical thing, rather than being involved in a search for authenticity, for fidelity to a particular recording.
The ways in which nostalgia is manifested vary between recordings, and it comes to the foreground more in some recordings than in others. It is my perception that Midler's performance was the first to inject this into the song. If this feature does reach back as far as the Midler performance, its reappearance in post-Carpenters recordings cannot be said entirely to be an indicator of the Carpenters' authorial presence. I would suggest, however, that references in any post-Carpenters recording to the other two factors — the introduction and the trumpet fill-in — means that 'nostalgia' in the recording may also suggest the legacy of the Carpenters' interpretation (even if that in turn was influenced by Bette Midler's). The Midler recording reveals a sense of nostalgic longing primarily by way of orchestration and tempo. In the opening bars an undulating solo piano, dancing around the tonic F minor, creates an intimate atmosphere from the start, recalling perhaps an informal nightclub setting. Midler's voice works with the piano in a slow rubato tempo, until the first chorus. At this point, drums and bass enter as orchestral and support, and have the effect of tying the tempo in place. A harp glissando heralds the next verse, which is further supported by sweeping strings. Throughout this verse, Midler's vocal line is filled with sustained notes, for instance on the words "sad affair", "sleep with you again", and "come again, come back and play". This is contrasted with an informal, semi-spoken, almost whispered "what can I say" in the middle of the verse, which has not only an air of intimacy to it, but brings to mind examples of moments in musicals,[4] which always seem to have a sense of the familiar, the already-known. The second chorus sees the introduction of a flute, but more significantly it begins in a much more upbeat tempo than before, with a more lilting rhythm emphasised by Midler's vocal patterns. Halfway through the verse, the mood shifts back again to the wistful feeling that opened the track. Remembering "[you called me] baby, baby, baby, oh baby", Midler's voice becomes filled with yearning as the music decreases in pace and volume to leave her voice almost hanging on each iteration of 'baby'. The waxing and waning of the tempo and orchestration throughout the track further add to the generic association with show tunes (which in turn associate with a particular style of popular song), creating moments of tension and release through obvious musical means.
The Carpenters' enactment of some kind of nostalgia is not quite as obvious as Midler's, or rather it is not so clearly connected with an idea of the song as being already well-known by the listener. Shifts in orchestration and dynamics appear at relevant moments in their recording, as indeed they do in almost all recordings of the song. Broadly speaking, in several versions there is a gradual crescendo towards the chorus, and a moment of suspense towards the end of the chorus. This is typically followed by a thicker texture in the second verse (which is still quieter than the loudest part of the preceding chorus), the maintenance of this texture throughout the next chorus, and a final climactic chorus to fade. The Carpenters are no different, and deploy texture and dynamics in generically predictable ways. Yet in terms of the recording history of the song, the Carpenters and Bette Midler are the first to use these signifiers so obviously: the shifts are much less blatant in the Coolidge or Bramlett versions. Of course, these markers are particularly relevant to music categorised as 'easy listening', as much of Barry Manilow's music, for example, would illustrate. (See 'Mandy' (1975), 'Trying To Get The Feeling' (1976), and 'Even Now' (1978).) Neither Bramlett nor Coolidge (with Cocker and Russell) fall neatly — or even at all — into the 'easy listening' genre, and as such we should perhaps not expect to see similar uses of these signifiers. Nonetheless, the overall effect of the Carpenters' and Midler's treatment of these factors means that they do evoke all of the emotional ebbs and flows that are brought into being in that genre. Whether the markers had such a connotation prior to their repeated use in easy listening tunes, or whether they now connote yearning because of their generic associations is something of a moot point. Part of the emotional landscape is a nostalgic longing, and ultimately, the surges of emotion and longing are enacted through the tactical use of such factors as texture and dynamics. Karen's voice of course has its role to play, with her capacity for elongated phrases, and in particular her purposeful suspension of rhythm also contributes to the nostalgic effect. At the beginning of the second verse, each syllable of her first word — "Loneliness" — falls slightly behind the quaver beat on which it is expected. The first syllable, "Lo-", is suspended by elongating each of the constituent phonemes, and a similar tactic assists in the delaying of the next two syllables. This effect is mirrored by the introduction of backing vocals at the line "What to say to make you come again". Richard and Karen's overdubbed voices interject, "What to say", coinciding their 'What' with Karen's 'say', and thereby delaying the three-word unit.
'Superstar': post-Carpenters
It seems that most post-Carpenters recordings take at least two of these significant factors — the introduction, the trumpet fill-in, or the sense of nostalgia — and deploy it in such a way as to invoke the lingering authorial presences of Karen and Richard. For the purposes of clear reference over the next few paragraphs, the following is a list of the post-Carpenters recordings I have located:
| Year | Artist | Album |
| 1981 | Elkie Brooks | Pearls |
| 1993 | Superfan | Soundtrack to Wayne's World 2 (dir. Stephen Surjik). Also on the Pretenders' Fifteen Hard-Ons a Day |
| 1994 | Sonic Youth | If I Were a Carpenter |
| 2000 | Dogstar | Happy Endings |
| 2000 | Pam Bricker | U-Topia |
| 2003 | Ruben Studdard | Soulful |
Rather than approaching this chronologically, I would like to adopt a more thematic perspective and start with the 1993 recording by Superfan, a band formed primarily for the purposes of recording this song by Urge Overkill and Chrissie Hynde. In the introductory bars of Superfan's recording, the reference to the Carpenters' recording is obvious. The oboe's melody is reassigned to a harmonica, and the horns' chords are sounded on an electric piano with a subtle vibrato setting that has supported the harmonica until that point. Other minor differences are palpable — the descending bass fill is absent, for example — but the overall melodic content is strikingly similar to the Carpenters' recording. The Carpenters' trumpet fill-in is also discarded by Superfan, but the structuring of the group allows for the narrative to be played out in a particular way which alludes to the Carpenters' recording: the strategic use of two vocalists — Nash Kato (of Urge Overkill) and Chrissie Hynde — allows the group to inject a sense of nostalgia into the narrative. Hynde sings solo up until the first chorus, Kato solos in the first half of the second, and she and Kato duet in the choruses. This instils the recording with a sense of a story, openly reclaiming the original concept behind the song, of a groupie singing to a superstar. (The song was originally called 'Groupie (Superstar)'.) Indeed, the group's very name is surely a device to enable an implicit invocation of the relationship between the song's narrator (or, in this case, narrators) and the 'superstar'. Significantly, it is only Chrissie Hynde who sings "I love you, I really do" at the end of the first chorus, further positioning her character as a devoted 'groupie' who has been jilted by a wayward star. As a point of equal interest, it is Kato who sings of Hynde playing a 'sad guitar', making the narrative roles quite confused.
Although exposing the narrative also recalls the authority of Bramlett and Russell, another parallel effect of this in Superfan's recording is of the nostalgia conjured by Midler and the Carpenters. I would thus argue that Midler invokes a sense of nostalgia for the song, constructing a sense of familiarity with the song as an object. By comparison, the Carpenters suggest more of a kind of diegetic nostalgia, in which the narrator yearns for the superstar at the heart of the song's narrative. It is this sense of narrative combined with yearning that characterises Superfan's recording of the song. The narrative is underlined in their recording by means of the spoken interlude in the middle of the song. Here, Chrissie Hynde's character asks for "Room 1218 please", only to find the occupant absent, and declines an offer to leave a message. Nash Kato's character is then heard on a telephone — "This is room 1218" — but there are no messages. This dialogue quite clearly underlines one permutation of the narrative already written into the song, and more specifically points to the implication of a female groupie and a male superstar (that, of course, cultural assumptions would have us presume all along). Bringing the narrative to the fore in this way refocuses any sense of nostalgia on to the narrative itself, thereby recreating something of the Carpenters' nostalgia in this later recording.
Dogstar's recording of the song in 2000 is again strikingly similar to the Carpenters' version, particularly in its use of the introductory material, and despite a noticeably increased tempo. Here, there are two significant differences: first, two bars of pre-intro are sounded on the drums; and second, the chords heard on the horns in the earlier recording are played in double-time by Dogstar (on electric guitar, as is the whole introductory melody).
Figure 1.4: Introduction to Dogstar's recording of 'Superstar'
The trumpet fill-in is notably absent from the choruses, but the use of backing vocals in the Dogstar recording does recall the Carpenters' overdubbing. Dogstar are not obviously overdubbed in their choruses, and if they are then it is not on nearly the same scale as that employed by the Carpenters. Yet the harmonies used by the all-male band are reminiscent of those used in the earlier recording. Apart from the few differences already noted, the obvious and crucial difference is one of genre, since Dogstar are a guitar-based rock band. This clearly accounts for many of the differences in musical detail between the two recordings, such as the choice of instruments. Ultimately, though, Dogstar's version comes across as a rendition of the song in a different genre, with the Carpenters recording as a clear starting point (as denoted primarily by the introduction).
The recording of 'Superstar' by Sonic Youth, for the tribute album If I Were a Carpenter, is also highly referential to the Carpenters' recording, and this is in a sense to be expected because of the nature of the album as a project (as a tribute to the Carpenters' work). Equally, the song's appearance on this album makes quite clear the Carpenters' centrality in the recording history of the song, something which I am arguing can already be garnered from the subsequent recordings. Yet the ways in which singer Thurston Moore and his fellow band members treat the song and the key reference points therein establish a relationship with the earlier recording that is very different from that set up by Dogstar. Like Superfan and Dogstar, Sonic Youth open their recording with the melody penned by Richard Carpenter. The tempo and mood set by Sonic Youth are very similar to the Carpenters' recording during the opening bars, but several crucial differences occur that also suggest that an unusual relationship will unfold between this recording and its reference point. First, before the introduction even commences in the Sonic Youth recording, we hear the distant sound of drums and an acoustic guitar strumming a chord whose tonality is obscured: F, definitely, but whether it is major or minor is unclear, partly because its appearance is so short (being played only twice in the background), and partly because the third tone is either absent or too quiet to hear. This F chord is interrupted by a noise suggesting the movement of an electric guitar or microphone while it is plugged in (or perhaps the act of plugging it in), and then a few seconds of amplifier distortion. As the band enters to commence the introduction proper, Thurston Moore heralds the song's opening with a loud exhalation. Although melodically a steel-stringed acoustic guitar simply replaces the Carpenters' oboist, there are other musical gestures from the earlier introduction that are treated very differently in the later recording. For instance, Sonic Youth's bass player Kim Gordon takes up the line instituted by the Carpenters' bassist — a simple line descending in step from F to B with a dotted rhythm: 
Yet at the point when the earlier recording makes use of a descending bass motif to lead into the verse, Gordon repeats an upwards motif. In fact, it sounds as if three notes from the original motif have actually been sampled and reversed. Similarly, the horn chords from the Carpenters recording have almost certainly undergone the same treatment, although the slow attack on the original means that the reversal is more subtle than with the bass motif. A hi-hat — used in both recordings to keep time during the bars of sustained horns — is also reversed, and it interrupts the 'normal' hi-hat sound during the two bars immediately preceding the first verse. Finally, the F minor chord at the end of the Carpenters' introduction, reasserting the tonic, is rejected by Sonic Youth in favour of F major: could this also, in a sense, be a kind of inversion? In addition, Moore's exhalation can be seen as a form of reversal, if we consider the significance of Karen Carpenter's inhalations. She was well known for being able to sustain long phrases, such as in the first verse of 'Goodbye To Love'. This was one of the most technically difficult songs for Karen to sing as the elongated phrasing of Richard's melody left little time for her to breathe. It is within that context that Ray Coleman comments on Richard Carpenter's decision not to edit-out Karen's very audible intakes of breath in the song: "Giving the record a distinctly human edge at the start, where it began with voice and piano, Richard decided to leave in Karen's audible intake of breath. ... Richard's instruction to not edit-out the deep breaths on 'Goodbye to Love' and on other tracks added a special, unexpected dimension" (Coleman 1994, 125). Given the meaning of inhalations for the voice of Karen Carpenter, then, Thurston Moore's heavy sigh takes on quite some significance. Ultimately, the reversal of several features that had distinguished the Carpenters' introduction — perhaps even without our knowing it, in the case of the hi-hat — signifies an ambivalent relationship with the recording which Sonic Youth appear to be taking as inspiration.
Throughout the rest of Sonic Youth's recording, a further sense of ambivalence towards the Carpenters' recording is set up at key moments. Karen's supposedly 'intimate' vocals, which were so central to the construction of the 'presence' of her voice, are caricatured throughout: one review describes Moore's "deadpan, microphone-practically-in-my-mouth vocals" (Wittmershaus 2002). According to the Carpenters' engineer, Roger Young, Karen Carpenter habitually sang very close to the microphone (Coleman 1994, 125). Perhaps it is something of an irony, then, that as Kevin Holm-Hudson notes, Karen's proximity to the recording equipment was not a particular feature of her vocal work for 'Superstar', as the recording made use of her first take, one "originally intended as a 'scratch' or 'guide' vocal" (2002, parag. 26). Yet the idea of her vocal intimacy, partly as established through this proximity, persists because in so much of the Carpenters' work her voice is to be understood in this way. Moore's extreme proximity to the microphone in fact affords his vocals a distorted sound. Such distortion is also used by Sonic Youth to taint other central aspects of the Carpenters' recording. For example, the trumpet fill-in which distinguished their release is taken on by Sonic Youth, on the piano, but a distorted and overdriven guitar overwhelms the melody with sheer noise. Generally, the verses in Sonic Youth's recording see very little reverb on any of the instruments used, and this gives a dry, lugubrious sense to the recording which stands in stark contrast to the lush, smooth production which distinguishes Richard Carpenter's style. In this way, it is not just Moore's vocals which "transform a sentimental, syrupy pop song into an obsessed, quasi-insane, rocking-back-and-forth-in-front-of-the-stereo symphony of musical pathos" (Wittmershaus 2002). The aural graffiti found in Sonic Youth's recording has the effect of forcing their technology upon the listener, and this is a relationship with technology very different from that played out in the Carpenters' version. Where the Carpenters would use technology to construct a smooth, constrained atmosphere, in which technology's function is almost to exscribe its own presence, Sonic Youth gleefully plaster it all over key elements of the earlier recording, twisting and disfiguring it in the process. This recording bears perhaps the most interesting relationship of post-Carpenters recordings to that 1971 release. Sonic Youth's version may in fact illustrate something of the progressive potential of restorative nostalgia, in their turn to this 'monument' of the past in order to achieve something forward-looking.
Reference to the Carpenters' recording is negotiated quite differently in Elkie Brooks' 1981 recording. In certain superficial ways, Brooks' recording appears to be quite different from the Carpenters'. Hers stands out from other post-Carpenters recordings by reclaiming some of the original lyrics, singing of a desire to 'sleep with', rather than 'be with', the absent star. The change was made by the Carpenters in line with their 'wholesome' philosophies (Coleman 1994, 105), and Brooks returns to the original lyric. To be comparative, Brooks' introduction most closely resembles that on the Cocker/Coolidge recording, with a piano oscillating between the tonic chord and one with a suspended supertonic, although Brooks' recording is slower and the piano more legato than in the introduction to the first recording. Brooks has a sense of both Coolidge and Karen Carpenter to her voice, although the slightly gritty timbral moments and the frequency of her vibrato resemble more closely Coolidge's vocals. Despite these fleeting moments of similarity to the Coolidge/Cocker recording, Brooks' recording features one highly conspicuous reference to the Carpenters' version. With minimal differences in melody and rhythm, the trumpet fill-in scored by Richard Carpenter is taken up by the pianist of Brooks' recording (see Figure 1.5).
Figure 1.5: Fill-in in Elkie Brooks' recording of 'Superstar'
This ultimately culminates in a kind of parody of the Carpenters' recording through the treatment of the motif. At first distinctly similar to the Carpenters' trumpet motif, but set as a background element, by the last chorus Brooks' track foregrounds the theme in an almost comic fashion through heavy homophonic orchestration, with the rhythm emphasised by the drums (3'05"-3'07").
In the same year as the highly referential Dogstar recording, jazz singer Pam Bricker also recorded the song as part of a project to capture the "freshness and spontaneity of a live performance without the annoying background noise of cash registers and talking" (Liner notes, U-Topia (2000)). An improvisatory mood pervades Bricker's recording, vocally and instrumentally. Minimal orchestration is deployed: Bricker's voice is supported by piano, plucked double bass and brushed snare and hi-hat, and this instrumental set-up is obviously crucial to the smooth jazz feel on the recording. The genre is indulged in, with nearly two minutes of piano improvisation after the first chorus, and a very improvisatory feel towards the end of the track that extends into the vocals and drums. This recording is quite unusual in that, if a comparative approach is to be adopted, it resembles most closely Bette Midler's recording. That is to say, Bricker and her band seem to bring about a sense of nostalgia for the song, as I have argued Midler's recording does, rather than a sense of longing for the star, which seems to characterise the Carpenters' recording and, I believe, Elkie Brooks' also. Bricker's recording achieves this kind of nostalgia not, as Midler does, primarily through changes in texture or tempo, both of which are mostly static on the Bricker track, but through the extreme improvisation which occurs. What this seems to achieve is the idea of the song as an object, a text for interpretation and reconstruction, rather than as a supposedly 'genuine' medium of personal expression. This is also implicit in the project which Bricker describes in the liner notes, since the album is designed to be about the idea of performance, the act of rendering a song.
Ruben Studdard's recording from 2003 extends further this relationship with the song as an object. The first major difference to consider between Studdard's recording and the Carpenters' is that of the singer's sex. The vast majority of previous interpreters of the song have served to set up a female groupie/male star relationship, with Sonic Youth's version as a notable exception. Holm-Hudson argues that the change of the singer's sex in the Sonic Youth recording already "invites an altogether more serious interpretation — that this 'groupie' may in fact be a pathological fan" (2002, parag. 45). He goes on to justify the sinister nature he perceives, although it is significant that a crucial piece of evidence is found in the lyrics' articulation of the desire to 'be with' (not 'sleep with) the star. For Holm-Hudson, this change "allows for a more vicarious interpretation" (parag. 42), since it suggests the possibility that any affair may not actually have happened, and that the song is more about a fantasy than a recollection. This in turn suggests that the Carpenters' decision to make that change is something of a precursor to the psycho-fan narrative that Holm-Hudson perceives in the Sonic Youth recording. That this change in the lyrics was brought about by the Carpenters suggests that their authorial influence is perceptible even in this 'sinister' feel, which Holm-Hudson implies is entirely a Sonic Youth construct. Moreover, Holm-Hudson in fact offers little justification for the sex of the singer being a factor in such an interpretation. To an extent, I am inclined to agree with his statement that "'Groupies' are not generally male", although I would suggest that they are more precisely not considered or presumed to be male. Yet he goes on to read Moore's performance as enacting a "vicarious identification with the distant rock-star object", whose sex Holm-Hudson does not seem to question: he implies that the absent star is male, because of the 60s/70s rock guitarist implications in the song's lyrics, and it seems that for him, given a male singer, this must mean an identification with the star, rather than a sexual objectification of the star. I am not arguing here that the song must be afforded a sexual narrative, much less a heterosexual one, but it is notable that Holm-Hudson seems to ignore any potential for a sexual reading of a male interpretation of the song, describing the narrator in this version as "a pathological fan" (2002, parag. 45). In his formulation, it seems that Moore, as a male singer, cannot possibly be singing of sexual or quasi-sexual desire for an absent star (of either sex).
To extrapolate these points, the 'sinister interpretation' apparently invited by Moore's male identity cannot be presumed of Studdard's recording. If we are to take the song as recorded by Studdard as an 'authentic' expression of any kind of emotion, it would be more in the manner of the female 'groupies' who had previously recorded it. More significantly, as his recording enacts a form of nostalgia for the song, and given the predominantly female history of the song's performance, he seems ultimately to enact nostalgia for a 'female' song. At the very least, in this respect, Studdard's recording adopts a position more similar to Midler's or Brooks', for instance, than to Sonic Youth's. In Studdard's version, a sense of nostalgia is set up in the first instance by an expansive, symphonic orchestration. Some unusual harmonic shifts combine with a free sense of time in the introduction to establish a dramatic, even cinematic, atmosphere. Although melodically and harmonically Studdard's introduction soon deviates from the Carpenters', it does unfold from the opening notes of the vocal line, as did Midler's and the Carpenters'. Moreover, the classical orchestration also harks back to Richard Carpenter's arrangement. As Holm-Hudson argues, the Carpenters' introduction is filled with musical details which denote "'serious' music of a melancholy character", and these include the choice of orchestration (2002, parag. 38). In Studdard's version, similar tactics are deployed. Sweeping strings and harp arpeggios serve to reference particular styles of Romantic music, while major seventh chords also introduce a sense of an impending blues love song. Studdard's melismas — markers of the contemporary RnB genre in which he performs — have a tendency to emphasise the semitonal relation between the dominant and submediant tones in the minor key (E minor, in this case), and this further adds to a sense of 'melancholy', while also underlining the tonic-dominant relation that is at the centre of much Western art music. The melismas themselves arguably achieve a sense of the song's history, as the listener may be presumed to know the core melodic features so well that multiple melodic embellishments do not obscure the listener's sense of the song overall. Studdard's radical melismatic interventions may, in a sense, be something of a requirement by convention for a black singer performing very much within the contemporary RnB genre. Indeed, the construction of Studdard on American Idol, the television programme on which he found fame, was very much about his authority as a vocalist within that contemporary RnB genre. As such, the melismas, as one musical code for 'soulful-ness', are arguably to be expected in this performance. Nonetheless, it could also be suggested that such far-reaching intrusion into the song's melody can, after a point, only be 'allowed' on the basis of a presumed familiarity with the song on the part of the listener. In a sense, then, the combination of nostalgia for the song, and some of the ways in which this is achieved, makes this one of the most interesting performances, since it arguably demonstrates a specific nostalgia for the Carpenters' recording of the song. This may well be a by-product of what is overall an earnest attempt at a 'genuine' and 'personal' performance. However, it might equally be proposed that the markers of the 'genuine' and 'personal' — the melismas or the rubato, for instance — also refer back to the ideological foundations of Carpenters' recording, since that is also to be understood as a 'genuine' performance, with diegetic nostalgia inscribed therein. Thus, the 'genuine' in Studdard's version may well point to a certain characterisation of Karen Carpenter's voice, just as the orchestration seems to acknowledge Richard's part in the Carpenters' recording.
The reasons for the enduring centrality of the Carpenters' recording of 'Superstar' in post-Carpenters recordings are not obvious, although the success of their recording as a single in 1971 is almost certainly a significant contributing factor. Post-Carpenters recordings of the song display a marked tendency to refer to the Carpenters' recording lyrically, melodically, and thematically, thus ensuring a sense of referential presence. These surface details — the trumpet fill-in, the introduction — allow the listener to understand post-Carpenters recordings of the song not simply as covers of 'Superstar', but covers of the Carpenters' cover of 'Superstar'. The various genres in which the recordings operate obviously impact significantly on many of the musical decisions made in each recording, and yet generic conventions do not explain fully the insistent presence of the Carpenters' authority on the song's post-Carpenters life. So, although the fact that Dogstar assign the introductory melody to electric guitars (shunning the romantic orchestration of the Carpenters' recording) may be explained by their generic commitment, it does not explain their decision to include that melodic fragment. Similarly, as much as jazz conventions allow for the significant amounts of improvisation which Pam Bricker's recording features, the space allowed for improvisation in jazz also opens up great potential for an infusion of nostalgia, which is projected strongly by Bricker's recording. Underlying the surface of the song is a gradually emergent sense of ways in which formations of nostalgia also contribute to an overarching sense of the song as having a history in which the Carpenters' role is absolutely crucial. Between the melodic surface and the nostalgic undercurrent, it is as if 'Superstar' has become fixed at a post-original point (even though, as we have seen, the idea of an 'original' is already a particularly troublesome concept with respect to this song). In turn, this process underlines the possibility for a significant relationship between artist and song that may have little to do with other authors. The modes of reference to the Carpenters' recording vary significantly, including parody (such as Elkie Brooks' orchestration, or Thurston Moore's vocals), simple reference with some recasting (such as Dogstar's introduction), and the complex layering of nostalgia with melodic reinvention (as in Ruben Studdard's melismas). In different ways, each of these later versions will surely feed back into the history of 'Superstar' and, I would suggest, ensure a continuing perception of the Carpenters' version as a central point of reference. Moreover, this ongoing dialogue among covers, originals, and perceived originals, as well as the nostalgia that infuses the song's continuing identity, will collectively add to the already complexly layered problem of authorship in popular music recordings, the Spiegel im Spiegel effect of intertextual relations that form networks between performances.
Notes
[1] It should be noted that I am primarily considering the song's recording history, rather than its performance history. This decision was taken mainly for practical reasons, since unrecorded performances are by definition, hard to use as source material.
[2] My sincerest thanks go to Darrell, of www.betteontheboards.com, who supplied me with the audio track from Midler's performance on The Tonight Show, the video for which is no longer available.
[3] One area in which questions of nostalgia and music have been most notably raised is in the study of film music. Caryl Flinn (1992) has written in depth about the differing contributions of film scores to kinds of nostalgia, in the service of utopian images.
[4] I am thinking in particular of the line "Have I said too much?" towards the end of 'Don't Cry For Me Argentina' from Evita (see recordings by Madonna (1996) and Elaine Paige (1978)). The relationship between popular music generally and musicals is certainly one of exchange, rather than a one-way influence, and I do not want to suggest that Midler's performance lifts from musicals in a way that operates outside of any kind of longer and more complex cultural or historical context. Indeed, it is of note that Midler's own performing history started on the stage in musicals.
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