FEATURE:
Groovelines
Carole King – I Feel the Earth Move
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SPOTLIGHTING a classic song…
PHOTO CREDIT: Jim McCrary/Redferns/Getty Images
I am spending some time with the amazing I Feel the Earth Move. Featured on Carole King’s Tapestry, it was released as a single. Part of a double A-side alongside It’s Too Late, it reached number one in the U.S. I am going to dig deeper into this wonderful song and its background. I do love how I Feel the Earth Move has this incredible Blues vocal. I think people associate Tapestry with Folk or it being romantic or soft. The album is so broad and cannot be easily defined. However, I Feel the Earth Move is one of King’s rawest and greatest vocal performances. I am surprised there is not more written about I Feel the Earth Move. It is surprising more has not been written about the song. One of the greatest opening tracks ever. Plenty of writing about Tapestry, though it would be nice see more focused on arguably its best track. I am getting to a couple of features that give us some important background. Many assume that King had only written a few songs prior to Tapestry. Although this was her second album – after 1970’s Writer -, she was already a respected and hugely prolific songwriter. Ultimate Classic Rock explore this mesmeric track from a genius songwriter:
“By the time Carole King wrote “I Feel the Earth Move,” a double A-side released with “It’s Too Late” in April 1971, she wasn’t yet 30 and had already penned some of the biggest hit songs of the ‘60s.
The budding star had 10 years of songwriting under her belt, alongside her former husband and songwriting partner Gerry Goffin. The lyrics for many of those songs, however, were largely written by Goffin. After the couple divorced in 1968, King hesitated to become a solo songwriter. "I didn't want people to interpret what I wrote, I think I have a block against that," the singer admitted in a 1970 interview, noting that "people can point to a phrase in lyrics." "I want to make LPs. I don't want to be a star."
King had spent the ‘60s, the dawn of the sexual-liberation movement, raising two kids; she was pregnant at 17, while her husband had affairs, including one with Earl-Jean McCree of the girl group the Cookies that resulted in a child. By the end of the decade, King packed up her daughters and moved from Manhattan to the Laurel Canyon suburb of Los Angeles.
Tapestry, King’s second solo album, arrived on Feb. 10, 1971, one day after the deadly San Fernando earthquake hit L.A. The album’s opener was, coincidentally, “I Feel the Earth Move.” That wasn’t what the song was about, though the serendipity of it captured the attention of listeners.
The rollicking song was by far the most sexual track on the album, reflecting where King was in her life and the expansion of women’s liberation in America. “I Feel the Earth Move” is sung to a lover who sets King’s heart a “trembling.” There are cries of “Oh, baby, I can’t stand it," while King “lose[s] control, down to my very soul.” The piano provides the crashes while King’s voice strains against its limits, rolling with the melody, evoking a sense of physical reaction.
“To suggest an earthquake, I concluded with a continuous cluster of notes on the piano cascading rapidly downward in pitch until the band, and I ended the run together on a final C bass note,” King later wrote in her autobiography, A Natural Woman.
That ending was removed by Lou Adler, with King’s approval, though she still frequently performed it in concert. At the time, Adler served as King’s producer and manager; he was the one who put King into A&M Studios - studio B to be exact - for the song and album’s recording. Next door in studio C was Joni Mitchell, who was recording another seminal album singer-songwriter album from 1971, Blue.
Mitchell’s studio had a red Steinway that King thought sounded special, so when Mitchell vacated and King’s band had three hours in the room, they recorded “I Feel the Earth Move” on that piano”.
There is another interesting feature that examines and highlights one of the greatest songs ever. American Songwriter. Although they say I Feel the Earth Move was an A-side and It’s Too Late was its B-side, I think it was a double A-side. In any case, the success of I Feel the Earth Move caused this ignition. It was a pivotal moment in Carole King’s career. Still widely played to this day, I think I first heard it when I was very young. There was something about it that grabbed me. Not understanding what the lyrics concerned, it was King’s vocal that stuck with me:
“King didn’t ever intend to become a solo hitmaker. She just wanted to concentrate on making albums. But teamed with producer Lou Adler, King hit upon a bit of a more commercial sound on Tapestry. The new songs she was writing matched her knack for pop hooks with a more personal outlook.
“I Feel The Earth Move” found her singing with candor about sexual attraction. To get the sound she wanted, King had to do a bit of studio-hopping. In the studio next to her, Joni Mitchell was making the album Blue. When Mitchell was away for a bit, King headed into the other room to make use of a particular Steinway that offered the tone she wanted for the song.
King’s label heard a hit in “I Feel The Earth Move”. It didn’t hurt the song’s commercial prospects that its B-side, “It’s Too Late”, also started getting major airplay. Those two songs comprised a single that turned into a no. 1 hit. And that started the ball rolling on the Tapestry phenomenon that helped instigate the peak of the singer-songwriter era.
Behind the Lyrics of “I Feel The Earth Move”
“I Feel The Earth Move” describes how deep desire can untether you from your moorings. “I feel the earth move under my feet / I feel the sky tumblin’ down,” King sings about seeing her lover. His “mellow” visage rocks her world: “Oh, darlin’, I can’t stand it / When you look at me that way.”
“I know that emotions / Are somethin’ that I just can’t tame,” she explains about the effect he has on her. Toward song’s end, King leaves behind the song structure and simply repeats the phrase “all over” several times, lost in imagining the intimate moments they’ll be spending together.
The music to “I Feel The Earth Move” adds to the effect, as the churning piano groove mirrors the intensity of the lyrics. Carole King proved with the song that she could interpret her material as well as any of the dozens of artists who’d scored hits with her originals in the past”.
I do want to source from Wikipedia, and what they say about I Feel the Earth Move. In fact, they collated reviews for the song. I have chosen a few. Perhaps contrasting the rest of Tapestry, I don’t think that I Feel the Earth Move is an anomaly or that different. Perhaps bolder than the other songs, it does perfectly slot alongside them too:
“Music journalist Harvey Kubernik wrote that "I Feel the Earth Move" was "probably the most sexually aggressive song on the Tapestry album" and a "brave" opening to an album whose mood is mostly "mellow confessionality”.
AllMusic critic Stewart Mason describes the song as "the ultimate in hippie-chick eroticism" and writes that it "sounds like the unleashing of an entire generation of soft-spoken college girls' collective libidos". Cash Box described the song as being a "forceful 'earthquake song'" and considered its pairing with "It's Too Late" as a single to be "double dynamite". Record World said that it is "quality contemporary pop".
Author James Perone praised the way the lyrics and music work together. As a prime example, he notes the syncopated rhythm to the melody on which King sings "tumbling down". This rhythm, putting the accent at the end of the word "tumbling" rather than at the beginning, produces a "musical equivalent of a tumble". Perone also notes that the fast tempo allows the listener to feel the singer's excitement over being near her lover, and that the lyrics also express sexual tension even though that tension is left implicit”.
I am finishing off with this article dissects and explores the lyrics and the composition. It is a fascinating take and approach to a song that has lost none of its brilliance. Even though Carole King is hugely influential, I don’t think that there has been anyone quite like her since:
“Carole had several things going for her in her attempt at a breakthrough. Her songwriting prowess had yielded several classic hits, and by choosing to work with Lou Adler, she had a producer with a solid track record as a hitmaker (The Mamas & the Papas, Jan & Dean, Barry McGuire, Johnny Rivers, to name a few). She had her pick of the best session musicians in town and musical buddies like James Taylor and Joni Mitchell who were willing to lend a hand.
The little girl with perfect pitch who started piano lessons at the age of four and “wanted so much to master the popular songs pouring out of the radio,” and who jumped from kindergarten to second grade due to her “exceptional facility with words and numbers” was on her own now, a single parent with two children, after having ended the marriage with Goffin a few years before. It was time for Carole King to step out of the shadows and into the spotlight.
And all she had to do was be herself.
All songs written by Carole King except where noted.
“I Feel the Earth Move”: Rule #1 in the unwritten book How to Make a Breakthrough Album is “you can’t hold nothin’ back.” In the parlance of the times, you gotta let it all hang out and have complete confidence in what you’re trying to accomplish. Of all the songs on Tapestry, “I Feel the Earth Move” conveys that confidence, in both the nature of the composition and its intense, metaphorical expression of a woman’s sexual needs. Songfacts dutifully noted that “the song has a risqué feel (at least by 1971 standards),” but missed the equally important aspect of sex expressed in the song: the emotional connection.
The composition is split between two distinct parts. The chorus is set to a truncated minor blues pattern in the key of C minor (Cm7/F). This is where Carole expresses sexual desire in the lyrics over a background featuring the innate sexiness of the blues:
I feel the Earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumblin’ down
I feel my heart start to tremblin’
Whenever you’re around
Those lines are much more expressive than “Hey, I’m getting horny” because they capture the overwhelming nature of the libido when confronted with a desirable stimulus.
The verse lines are set to the complementary major key (Eb major) with a strong melody and a marvelous, obviously-written-on-a-piano chord pattern of Ebmaj7-Eb6-Abmaj7-Fm7/Ab, closing with a transitional pattern of F/G, Cm7, F/C, Cm7, F/C. This is where Carole covers the emotional aspects of closeness, tenderness and unfettered desire:
Oh, oh, darling, when you’re near me
And you tenderly call my name
I know that my emotions
Are something I just got to have you tame
I just got to have you baby
I love that closing line for its unashamed assertiveness. You go, girl!
Placing “I Feel the Earth Move” in the pole position opening the album has to rank as the biggest no-brainer of all time. You can tell Carole is feeling it, and that’s exactly what she needed to do to excite listeners. She receives solid support from the band with Charles Larkey thumping that bass and “Kootch” Kortchmar throwing in some tasty licks. The call-and-response between Carole’s piano and Kortchmar’s guitar in the instrumental passage is as good as it gets”.
I will leave it there. The glorious and hugely powerful opening track from Carole King’s Tapestry, I Feel the Earth Move deserves more discussion today. If you have not heard the song in a while, then do go and listen to it. Listen to Tapestry too. Caroline King’s defining and most popular album, there is not a weak moment on it. Its opening track, I Feel the Earth Move, is a perfect opener from…
A perfect album.