Paul McCartney called it the greatest female voice in the world: warm, lush, and impossibly intimate. Yet the woman behind it was fighting a grueling internal battle that ended her life at 32. This episode strips away the soft-focus 1970s nostalgia to find the real Karen Carpenter, a world-class drummer who never wanted the spotlight, an artist battling for control of her own life, and a pioneer whose death forced the world to finally confront eating disorders.

It follows the drum kit she used as armor, mastering Brubeck's 5/4 in a male-dominated jazz world while her brother was groomed as the family star, the audition where a session bassist signed her voice alone, and the label pressure that pulled her from behind the cymbals to the exposed front of the stage. It covers the contested medical debate around her death, the research funding explosion that followed, and the 1996 release of the solo album that finally proved she was a standalone artistic force.

• The glockenspiel refusal and the Ludwig kit: how a girl avoiding gym class became an elite drummer
• "The money's in the basement": the three-octave contralto that changed the family power structure
• Losing the fortress: why being moved to the front of the stage dismantled her sense of control
• The solo album that cost $400,000 in penalties and waited 17 years for release
• A death that changed the vocabulary: the coroner's findings, the disputed cause, and the research it funded