Where You Lead — a song of romantic devotion turned into a mother-daughter anthem

{"text":[[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":8.88,"text":"When Carole King performed her seminal album Tapestry in full at London’s Hyde Park in 2016, she invited her daughter Louise Goffin, also a songwriter, on to the stage to play a track she’d all but retired. King explained her reluctance from her perch at the piano: it came out, she said, “just at the beginning of women’s lib, and it’s [got] a kind of a ‘stand by your man’ lyric. So I didn’t exactly feel comfortable performing it.”"}],[{"start":35.88,"text":"The song in question was \"Where You Lead”, a great track — buoyant, breezy, uplifting — but one that the artist had been embarrassed by for years. Originally penned about a man inspiring such devotion that he leads you “to the ends of the earth”, it was rarely performed in King’s live sets. It wasn’t until almost 30 years later, in fact, that the writer reconciled herself with the song, thanks to a TV show that transformed its meaning."}],[{"start":61.52,"text":"King wrote “Where You Lead” for her 1971 album but, having trouble finishing it, she reached out to friend Toni Stern for help with the lyrics. “If you can figure out the bridge, you can get a credit for the song,” King proposed to the Californian poet."}],[{"start":76.04,"text":"Stern saw “Where You Lead” as too much of a “full-throttled loyalty song”. The lyrics do conjure a kind of fervent reverence: “All you have to do is call my name, and I’ll be there on the next train,” lyrics that made Stern recoil, later saying, “I would never write a lyric about a woman following a man!” Stern inserted a bridge that aimed to lessen this deference. “I never thought I could get satisfaction from just one man,” it went. “But if anyone can keep me happy, you’re the one who can.”"}],[{"start":103.08,"text":"“Where You Lead” was never a single, but it was a standout album track, with Rolling Stone calling it “ingratiatingly witty”. Though King had distanced herself from the song, others made it theirs. She helped Massachusetts songwriter Kate Taylor record it for her 1971 debut, while Barbra Streisand turned it into a US top 40 hit, with a studio version that same year and with a live rendition that same year and a live rendition in 1972. Sonny & Cher would later record it as part of a medley in 1973, while both Faith Hill and Marcia Hines made versions of it in 1995 and 2010 — country and soul-tinged takes respectively."}],[{"start":144.56,"text":"It was in 2000, however, that the song was given a true new lease of life. A new TV show, Gilmore Girls, was in the works and its creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino, was looking for a theme song for the cosy, autumnal show set in a quaint Connecticut town, following a bookish teenage daughter and her fiercely independent, faintly chaotic mother. “We were just looking for something that felt classic, and you just don’t get more classic than Carole King,” Sherman-Palladino later explained."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":173.68,"text":"King was asked for permission to use “Where You Lead”, but she remained steadfast in her dislike of it. Instead, she offered to re-record the track altogether, reworking it to better fit the show’s mother-daughter theme. She came up with the idea of a duet with her own daughter, recorded at Goffin’s home studio in Laurel Canyon, even rewriting the lyrics. Spousal devotion was reframed as maternal devotion instead, as she and Stern added a new bridge once more: “Just as long as we’re together, we can find a way”."}],[{"start":203.52,"text":"King said the rewrite was to “celebrate the relationship between a mother and her daughter — and that is the version I hope will endure”. Indeed, the Gilmore Girls version has far outlived the original recording. The series ended in 2007, but “Where You Lead” remains beloved by TV fans, its very opening lyrics a sort of unofficial anthem of autumn. Not only that, but it’s also come to represent all that the show stood for — independence, belonging and female friendship — something that Stern and King had perhaps intended all along."}],[{"start":235,"text":"The new version better fits the song’s original inspiration too. The song’s title harks back to the Book of Ruth, from the Hebrew Bible. “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay,” Ruth says to her mother-in-law Naomi, while King and Goffin both sing to each other in their duet: “Where you lead, I will follow, anywhere that you tell me to.” After this new version, King added the song back to her own live sets — a rare instance of a songwriter revisiting a song not just to rework how it sounds, but what it means, too."}],[{"start":267.56,"text":"Let us know your memories of ‘Where You Lead’ in the comments section below. More at ft.com/lifeofasong"}],[{"start":274.44,"text":"The paperback edition of ‘The Life of a Song: The stories behind 100 of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Chambers"}],[{"start":274.94,"text":"Music credits: Ode; Atlantic; Sony; MCA; Moorea; Rockingale"}],[{"start":294.16,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1792828258_7895.mp3"}