About We Can't Work It Out: Famous Feuds & Fallouts in Rock Music
We Can’t Work It Out: Famous Feuds & Fallouts in Rock Music is a music history and documentary podcast about famous bands, duos, and music groups that fell apart, or nearly did.
Each season explores one iconic act in depth, uncovering the band breakups, family conflicts, creative battles, addictions, relationships, money problems, rivalries, record-label pressure, and behind-the-scenes stories that changed music forever.
The Carpenters: Episode 10 - The Beat of Her Own Drum
By 1980, Karen Carpenter was trying to build a life of her own. She had made a solo album without Richard, fallen in love, married, and dreamed of the ordinary future she had wanted for years: a husband, children, and a home of her own.
In the final episode of our Carpenters season, we follow Karen through the whirlwind romance and marriage to Tom Burris, the return to the studio with Richard for Made in America, the collapse of her marriage, and her growing realization that she needed serious help for the eating disorder that had controlled her life for years.
The Beat of Her Own Drum closes the story of Karen and Richard Carpenter, and the complicated partnership that created some of the most unforgettable music of the 1970s.
29 Sept 2026
The Carpenters: Episode 9 - Who Killed Karen Carpenter's Album?
By early 1980, Karen Carpenter had finished the album she once feared she couldn't make without Richard. A&M Records had prepared photographs, artwork, a catalog number, and plans for a spring release. Then everything changed.
In this episode, we follow the record through tense playback sessions and conflicting memories.
So who actually stopped the album? Richard? A&M? The lack of an obvious hit? Or did Karen’s attempt at independence collide with the simple fact that the Carpenters machine was ready to start again?
And years later, when some of those rejected recordings began appearing under the Carpenters name, the mystery only became more complicated.
27 Sept 2026
The Carpenters: Episode 8 - Karen's Solo Album
For nearly a decade, Karen Carpenter recorded almost exclusively under her brother's direction. Then Richard stepped away from the Carpenters to recover from addiction, and Karen was suddenly given a chance to find out what kind of artist she could be on her own.
In this episode, we follow Karen to New York as she begins work on her first solo album with producer Phil Ramone. Surrounded by Billy Joel’s band and a completely different studio culture, Karen experiments with funk, soul, disco, more adult lyrics, and a harder rhythmic sound. She begins choosing songs, shaping vocal arrangements, changing lyrics, and discovering that she can walk into a studio without Richard and still know exactly what she wants.
By the time the album is finished, she has answered one of the biggest questions of her career: she can make music without Richard.
The next question is whether anyone will let her release it.
Sources include:
Ray Coleman, The Carpenters: The Untold Story
Randy L. Schmidt, Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter
Lucy O’Brien, Lead Sister: The Story of Karen Carpenter
Randy L. Schmidt, ed., Yesterday Once More: The Carpenters Reader
25 Sept 2026
The Carpenters: Episode 7 - Richard's Collapse
By 1978, the Carpenters faced another crisis, but this time Richard Carpenter was falling apart. What began years earlier as a prescription to help him sleep had developed into a serious Quaalude dependency, leaving him exhausted, underweight, increasingly unable to play, and desperate just to get through each performance.
In this episode, we follow the collapse of the Carpenters’ live career, from Richard’s shaking hands and failed detox attempts to the abrupt end of their 1978 Las Vegas engagement.
We also look at Karen performing without him in London, the growing tension inside the Carpenter family, Richard’s admission that he could no longer function, and his decision to enter the Menninger Clinic for treatment.
Sources include:
Ray Coleman, The Carpenters: The Untold Story
Randy L. Schmidt, Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter
Lucy O’Brien, Lead Sister: The Story of Karen Carpenter
Mike Cidoni Lennox and Chris May, with Richard Carpenter, Carpenters: The Musical Legacy
Randy L. Schmidt, ed., Yesterday Once More: The Carpenters Reader
23 Sept 2026
The Carpenters: Episode 6 - The Disappearing Singer
By 1975, Karen Carpenter’s weight loss had become impossible to ignore. But her struggle did not begin with a dramatic collapse or a single cruel comment. It developed gradually through dieting, touring, photographs, television appearances, changing expectations about her image, and an increasingly distorted view of her own body.
In this episode, we trace that progression from Karen’s first diet at seventeen to the disturbing reactions from audiences and friends who watched her grow dangerously thin. We look at the famous “chubby sister" story, the photographs and television footage that really did upset Karen, the ways she learned to hide how little she was eating, the people around her who slowly began to realize what was happening, and the health crisis that finally forced the Carpenters off the road.
Sources:
Ray Coleman, The Carpenters: The Untold Story
Randy L. Schmidt, Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter
Lucy O’Brien, Lead Sister: The Story of Karen Carpenter
Mike Cidoni Lennox and Chris May, with Richard Carpenter, Carpenters: The Musical Legacy
Randy L. Schmidt, ed., Yesterday Once More: The Carpenters Reader
Billboard, “TV Writers Faked Review,” January 28, 1989
21 Sept 2026
The Carpenters: Episode 5 - No Days Off
As the Carpenters became one of the biggest acts of the 1970s, success came with a punishing schedule of concerts, television appearances, recording sessions, interviews, airports, hotels, and constant travel.
In this episode, we follow Karen and Richard through relentless years when they barely had time to stop. The road could still be exciting and fun, but the pressure was beginning to show. Richard struggled to sleep, Karen learned to sleep whenever she could, and the demands of keeping the Carpenters machine running began taking a serious toll on both of them.
By 1975, exhaustion was no longer something they could simply push through.
Sources:
Coleman, Ray. The Carpenters: The Untold Story. 1994.
Lennox, Mike Cidoni, and Chris May, with Richard Carpenter. Carpenters: The Musical Legacy. 2021.
O’Brien, Lucy. Lead Sister: The Story of Karen Carpenter. 2023.
Schmidt, Randy L. Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter. 2010.
Schmidt, Randy L., ed. Yesterday Once More: The Carpenters Reader. 2012.
19 Sept 2026
The Carpenters: Episode 4 - Perfectly Wholesome
By the early 1970s, Karen and Richard Carpenter had become the picture of clean-cut American pop: smiling siblings, love songs, television appearances, and an image so wholesome that even President Richard Nixon embraced them.
In this episode, we explore how A&M Records, the press, television, politics, album covers, and the Carpenters themselves helped create one of the most powerful and limiting images in pop music. Behind the “nice kids from Downey” reputation were two serious musicians increasingly frustrated by being dismissed as square, safe, and hopelessly uncool.
The music was far more complicated than the image suggested. And eventually, that image would become something neither Karen nor Richard could easily escape.
Sources:
Coleman, Ray. The Carpenters: The Untold Story. 1994.
Lennox, Mike Cidoni, and Chris May, with Richard Carpenter. Carpenters: The Musical Legacy. 2021.
O’Brien, Lucy. Lead Sister: The Story of Karen Carpenter. 2023.
Schmidt, Randy L. Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter. 2010.
17 Sept 2026
The Carpenters: Episode 3 - Richard’s Sound
In this episode, we go inside the studio to see how Richard chose songs, built arrangements, shaped Karen’s voice, fought for production credit, and obsessed over every detail of the records. From “Close to You” and “We’ve Only Just Begun” to “Superstar,” “Top of the World,” and “Goodbye to Love,” Richard’s control helped create one of the most recognizable sounds of the 1970s.
But the closer we look, the more complicated the story becomes. Karen was not simply the voice in front of Richard’s ideas, and the partnership worked because both of them were more musically involved than the public understood.
Sources:
Coleman, Ray. The Carpenters: The Untold Story. 1994.
Lennox, Mike Cidoni, and Chris May, with Richard Carpenter. Carpenters: The Musical Legacy. 2021.
O’Brien, Lucy. Lead Sister: The Story of Karen Carpenter. 2023.
Schmidt, Randy L. Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter. 2010.
15 Sept 2026
The Carpenters: Episode 2 - Nothing to Hide Behind
Before Karen Carpenter became one of the defining voices of the 1970s, she saw herself as something else first: a drummer.
In Nothing to Hide Behind, we trace Karen’s evolution from teenage percussionist to reluctant frontwoman, the pressure to move her from behind the drum kit, the critics who treated her playing as a novelty, and the fear she felt once they pushed her into the spotlight.
It’s the story of what Karen gained by stepping out front, and what she may have lost when she left the safest place she knew.
Sources:
Coleman, Ray. The Carpenters: The Untold Story. 1994.
Lennox, Mike Cidoni, and Chris May, with Richard Carpenter. Carpenters: The Musical Legacy. 2021.
O’Brien, Lucy. Lead Sister: The Story of Karen Carpenter. 2023.
Schmidt, Randy L. Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter. 2010.
Schmidt, Randy L., ed. Yesterday Once More: The Carpenters Reader. 2012.
13 Sept 2026
The Carpenters: Episode 1 - The Family Business
Before Karen and Richard Carpenter became one of the biggest musical acts of the 1970s, they came from an unusually close family whose influence followed them throughout their career.
In Episode 1 of We Can’t Work It Out: Famous Feuds & Fallouts in Rock Music, we go inside the Carpenters' family story: Agnes and Harold, Richard’s early musical promise, Karen’s unexpected rise, the move to California, the family’s involvement in the duo’s finances and career, and the complicated question of where family loyalty ended and independence began.
This is the beginning of the Carpenters' story before the fame, the pressure, and the fractures that would eventually change everything.
Sources:
Coleman, Ray. The Carpenters: The Untold Story. 1994.
Lennox, Mike Cidoni, and Chris May, with Richard Carpenter. Carpenters: The Musical Legacy. 2021.
O’Brien, Lucy. Lead Sister: The Story of Karen Carpenter. 2023.
Schmidt, Randy L. Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter. 2010.
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