Carpenters – Only Yesterday

“Only Yesterday” – Single by the Carpenters from the album Horizon
B-side “Happy”
Released: March 14, 1975. Recorded: January 1975

Richard Carpenter wrote this with lyricist John Bettis. They were sure the song wouldn’t be a hit, and lost a $1,000 bet to their recording engineer Roger Young when they were proven wrong.

“Only Yesterday” peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100 and number one on the Adult Contemporary (AC) charts, The Carpenters’ eleventh number one on that chart.

Cash Box called it a “ballad with its infectious beat” and that “Karen’s dulcet, multi-tracked vocals soar over a dynamic arrangement which should be buzzing over the airwaves for a long time.”

The song was The Carpenters’ last top-ten single on the Billboard Hot 100—though they would have nine more top-ten singles on the AC charts, ending with AC number seven “Make Believe It’s Your First Time”, a few months after Karen’s death in 1983.

The music video features some footage of Karen and Richard at work in the studio. After Karen sang the line, “the promise of morning light”, it faded from the studio to a fountain in Huntington Library Gardens in San Marino, California. It then featured some footage of a red moon bridge, which was roped off to the general public, in the Japanese Garden at Huntington Library.

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Carpenters - Only Yesterday

Carpenters - Only Yesterday03:47

Lyrics:
After long enough of being alone
Everyone must face their share of loneliness
In my own time, nobody knew
The pain I was goin’ through
And waitin’ was all my heart could do

Hope was all I had until you came
Maybe you can’t see how much you mean to me
You were the dawn breaking the night
The promise of mornin’ light
Filling the world surroundin’ me
When I hold you

Baby, baby, feels like maybe
Things will be all right
Baby, baby, your love’s made me
Free as a song, singin’ forever

Only yesterday when I was sad and I was lonely
You showed me the way to leave the past and all its tears behind me
Tomorrow maybe even brighter than today
Since I threw my sadness away
Only yesterday

I have found my home here in your arms
Nowhere else on earth I’d really rather be
Life waits for us, share it with me
The best is about to be
And so much is left for us to see
When I hold you

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