The music overshadows the lyrics in many places, which are simpler and more straightforward than in the past. It was less commercially successful than her other 1970s hit albums, which was a shame, as it was her more creative one. All the songs are less sing along then previous Carole songs but that still doen't make this album bad it makes it better in fact because it shows how serious Carole is as an artist. Believe In Humanity" is a more blatant humanist statement set to a more blatant groove out of the Billy Preston style school;all of this is extrodinarily funky stuff. Presented as a sort of song cycle, the album opens and closes with two versions of the title song and the songs on each side segue directly into one another.

Not inner groove distortion but any time the levels get somewhat loud there especially the vocals break up. Oh, and we've got ~socially conscious~ lyrics on here, but they're socially conscious in that overly earnest early 70s way that has not aged well at all. The whole adds up to a formalized song cycle in which the Carole King Institution issues its summary social and philosophical expression to date — one that eschews melody for orchestration and lyrical spontaneity for generalities — the overall impact being the equivalent of an early Sixties soap opera. As the years passed, it remained one of her most consistent sellers as more people discovered its uniqueness. It's got the pleasant melancholy and strong melodies that characterize most Carole King albums, but there's an extra dose of grooviness here that, as another reviewer has mentioned, sounds inspired by Marvin Gaye's landmark What's Going On.In it, Carole King tells us: “Maybe I’m living/With my head in the sand/I just want to see people giving/I want to believe in my fellow man.

What, in heaven’s name, should be the difference between Carole King’s “soul” and her “real-life role”?The album did go gold, got excellent reviews, went to number 6 a bit of a let down and spawned the hit Believe In Humanity and the minor hit You Light Up My life, not to be mistaken for Debbie Boones massive hit a few years later. In “Fantasy End,” the album’s coda, Carole King announces: “Now that I’ve expressed my soul/I’ll step back into my real-life role. Moving beyond the spare arrangements of its predecessors, for Fantasy Carole scored brass and string arrangements and experimented with Latin and funk styles. It really is a very enjoyable listen from beginning to end if you are into that lovely, soft and slightly comforting seventies sound. Subsequently we are treated alternately to a series of dramatic monologues, in some of which Carole King appears as herself, voicing personal hope and aspiration, but the majority featuring her as someone else, black, Latin American or otherwise, voicing the same sentiments.

But this is one of the earlier concepts of blending the two genres so one could'nt tell where it ended or began. Despite the fact that the songs are almost always constantly drifting, the sheer loveliness of her trademark singing style and the ornate, quasi-classical nature of the album guarantees this as a very decent listen. The technique does not truly hit home until tracks 5 and 6, when such a level of pure melodic bliss is reached that I cannot help but to be utterly bowled over. There aren't any game-changing standouts (Joni doesn't necessarily have these either) but there doesn't need to be. I would describe this album as the intersection between Tapestry, Make Way for Dionne Warwick, What's Going On, and Watertown.There were problems in the ghettos ("Haywood" and "Welfare Symphony"), and the world's environment and very existence were in jeopardy ("Being At War With Each Other"). Apparently, Carole King has forgotten that they are, and no amount of well-meaning altruism can make up the difference. This album is laregely remembered for it's it "Corazon'",a tune that actually fairly uncommerical in it's Brazillian jazz-funk groove kind of way. The flip side of the latter single, "You Light Up My Life" (not the Debby Boone hit), charted separately from its A-side.