"You've Got a Friend" is a contract of care written in the simplest possible language. Carole King does not promise grand gestures. She promises to show up. The song maps the geography of loyalty: no distance too far, no season too harsh, no hour too late. Winter, spring, summer, or fall -- the offer does not expire. The radical thing about the lyric is not what it says. It is what it leaves out. There is no condition attached. No "if" clause. Just "all you have to do is call." The song treats friendship as something closer to gravity than choice -- a force that operates whether you remember it is there or not.

Carole wrote it in 1971 when Tapestry was finding its shape. The same year