It's Too Late

Carole King wrote this with Toni Stern, a free-spirited painter and lyricist from Los Angeles who complemented King very well. Said Stern: "I'm sure there was a California quality in me that appealed to Carole. She was moving from a familial, middle class lifestyle to Laurel Canyon, where she started to let her hair down, literally and figuratively. We worked off our contrasts." Stern would usually agonize over lyrics, but she wrote these very quickly. Stern also worked with King on the Tapestry track "Where You Lead."

This intimate song is a great example of the singer/songwriter sound that King helped popularized. Over a moody melody, King sings about how she realizes her once-promising relationship is over. While she's putting on a brave face, she's feeling tormented inside.

This was released as the B-side to "I Feel the Earth Move." After a few weeks of continuous airplay with "I Feel the Earth Move," many DJs all over the States decided to give "It's Too Late" an equal amount of airplay. Soon, it came to the point where everyone preferred "It's Too Late," which ended up topping the charts by May of 1971. "I Feel the Earth Move" never charted.