Toni Stern

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Toni Stern was an American songwriter and poet, born on 4 November 1944. She died on 17 January 2024, at the age of seventy-nine. She is best known as a lyricist for Carole King, with whom she collaborated in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Stern wrote the words, King composed the music. That is how they worked on It's Too Late, a song about a relationship that is over.

Music and breakthrough

It's Too Late appeared on King's 1971 album Tapestry, one of the best-known albums of the singer-songwriter tradition. What makes Stern's contribution so special is the lyric: a sober, almost calm look back at a love that no longer works, without blame and without drama. In those days few women wrote the lyrics for pop songs that were sung by another woman, and Stern managed to add a personal voice of her own to King's music.

Influence

In 2017 Stern published As Close as I Can, a book of her poems. Her name is less often in the foreground than King's, but her work shows how important a lyricist is in a pop song. Anyone who listens to It's Too Late hears two handwritings: that of the composer and that of the writer of the words.

Listening

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• Mixtape 10: Women in Pop Music^NL Reader