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In the '60s and '70s, America's music scene was marked by raucous excess, reflected in the tragic overdoses of young superstars such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. At the same time, the uplifting harmonies and sunny lyrics that propelled Karen Carpenter and her brother, Richard, to international fame belied a different sort of tragedyâ??the underconsumption that led to Karen's death at age thirty-two from the effects of an eating disorder.

In Why Karen Carpenter Matters, Karen Tongson (whose Filipino musician parents named her after the pop icon) interweaves the story of the singerâ??s rise to fame with her own trans-Pacific journey between the Philippinesâ??where imitations of American pop styles flourishedâ??and Karen Carpenterâ??s home ground of Southern California. Tongson reveals why the Carpenters' chart-topping, seemingly whitewashed musical fantasies of "normal love" can now have profound significance for herâ??as well as for other people of color, LGBT+ communities, and anyone outside the mainstream culture usually associated with Karen Carpenterâ??s legacy. This hybrid of memoir and biography excavates the destructive perfectionism at the root of the Carpentersâ?? sound, while finding the beauty in the singer's