If you are the sort of music scrounge who likes digging thru the bargin bins for lost albums you might add K.T. Oslin to your list of artists to look for.
Contemporary with Carpenter but rather over-focused on the "maturity" thing you mention -- she sings several various nice little numbers exactly nailing that theme, and sadly not much else. "Eighties Ladies" (girls of the 50's, growing up ... ) being the archtype. "Hey, Bobby!" is skewed to a _slightly_ younger change of life-stage -- (first time the POV character is able to splurge on a brand new car ...)
Regarding "He Thinks He'll Keep Her" it's strikingly ambiguous. On the one hand she greets him at the door sitting atop, perhaps HIS, packed suitcase and apparently surprises him with news he, admittedly, should have deduced long before, but didn't. She doesn't love HIM anymore, and so kicks him out. On the other hand, it might appear she's tired of carpools and PTA and general mommy-ness and so she packs HER suitcase, and surprises him with the news she doesn't love (plural) "you" -- him and the Xmas card "perfect family" -- anymores, and so she leaves him to cope with the carpool, etc while she starts over a "single" again. It's a Rorshach-test of a story -- how people interpret depends on them more than what's there. In either case, of course, it's HIS fault. Hmmm.
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Maturity
Date: 2005-08-17 12:36 pm (UTC)Contemporary with Carpenter but rather over-focused on the "maturity" thing you mention -- she sings several various nice little numbers exactly nailing that theme, and sadly not much else. "Eighties Ladies" (girls of the 50's, growing up ... ) being the archtype. "Hey, Bobby!" is skewed to a _slightly_ younger change of life-stage -- (first time the POV character is able to splurge on a brand new car ...)
Regarding "He Thinks He'll Keep Her" it's strikingly ambiguous. On the one hand she greets him at the door sitting atop, perhaps HIS, packed suitcase and apparently surprises him with news he, admittedly, should have deduced long before, but didn't. She doesn't love HIM anymore, and so kicks him out. On the other hand, it might appear she's tired of carpools and PTA and general mommy-ness and so she packs HER suitcase, and surprises him with the news she doesn't love (plural) "you" -- him and the Xmas card "perfect family" -- anymores, and so she leaves him to cope with the carpool, etc while she starts over a "single" again. It's a Rorshach-test of a story -- how people interpret depends on them more than what's there. In either case, of course, it's HIS fault. Hmmm.