If you click on a Tori Holub video on social media and close your eyes, music fans will be transported back to the 1970s, when songs by Karen and Richard Carpenter topped Top 40 charts, setting a new standard for melodic pop.
Tori Holub wasn’t born until 2003 — 22 years after the Carpenters recorded their 10th and final album in 1981. Feb. 4, 2023, marked 40 years since Karen Carpenter died at the age of 32.
Yet, the 20-year-old is introducing a new generation of music fans to the Carpenters’ music on social media, by performing home-recorded renditions of hits including “Close To You,” “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “For All We Know,” “Superstar,” “Rainy Days and Mondays” and “Goodbye to Love.”
Without a recording contract, but with the ability to share her music widely on social media, Holub says “she’s very surprised” by her spike in followers since she began posting the Carpenters’ songs.
“I really started on TikTok. Slowly, I’ve spread it out, reposting those videos over Facebook, Instagram and Twitter,” she said.
“I don’t personally think I sound like Karen, but a lot of people do, and they find that interesting,” said Holub. “To have the same range as her and be able to sing those really low notes,” does help make her recordings sound like the Carpenters, “mixed with my production style.”
Unlike karaoke tracks that allow a singer to be accompanied by prerecorded backing vocals, “I actually record all those harmonies myself” — both Karen’s and Richard’s.
“I just start with the lead, and then keep stacking the vocals, like they did it back in the day,” she said. “The harmonies and each part will be recorded separately, three times over, at the same frequency.”
The layering of harmonies is part of what defines Carpenters’ songs, said Holub.
The process is time-consuming, given the audio engineering shortcuts available these days. “It’s probably unusual, because most people will copy and paste or Autotune like crazy.”
Ironically, Holub said she doesn’t remember hearing the Carpenters’ music in her house much as a child.
“My parents absolutely love them — they had ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ at their wedding, of course — but I don’t recall them ever playing Carpenters’ music deliberately. But I only learned of this after bringing up that I was interested in their music.”
Holub said she recalls hearing a lot of Carpenters’ Christmas songs on the radio.
“I remember having a very distinct image in my head that Karen was probably in her 50s or 60s, because her voice was so low and classic,” Holub said. “From conversation, I knew she had passed away, but I believe that was the extent of it.”
As for career goals, Holub said, “I’m most comfortable in the studio — I’m kind of a nervous performer,” which is contributing to her ever-expanding YouTube channel.
She said she is working “on a few different projects of original material, with a couple different composers and songwriters.”
Holub will be singing live at a festival with Carpenters connections: “I am performing at The Carpenters’ 55th anniversary concert, in Downey, California,” where the Carpenters moved to in 1963 from New Haven, Connecticut, when Karen and Richard were in their teens.
“My ultimate goal is really to bring back this sound from the 60s and 70s, with this harmonic sound, to the new modern mainstream,” she said.
