Carole King’s A Natural Woman (2012) remains one of the best music memoirs ever published. While many artists fill page after page with bawdy and salacious episodes on the road, in the motel room, on stage, and in the studio, King instead offers a measured and candid look back at her ups and downs, her relationships with abusive husbands, her reticence in public, and her desire to lead a quiet as possible and unassuming life. Unlike other memoirs, she is not out to settle scores, but she’s fully present to dig deep into the power of a piano chord, the magic of a moment when lyrics and music coalesce into a transformative song, and those instances when the earth moved musically.
Since A Natural Woman provided such a complete portrait of the woman as an artist, it seems as if there would be little room for a new biography of King, especially one that contains no new interviews with King. Yet, journalist Jane Eisner’s lively Carole King: She Made the Earth Move (Yale, September 2025) offers an admiring look at King and her life and music.
