Richard Carpenter, composer and arranger of the duo The Carpenters, and lyricist John Bettis formed a prolific songwriting partnership beginning in the early 1970s after meeting through the Carpenters’ circle. Together they wrote several of the Carpenters’ signature hits, including “Top of the World” (a 1973 US #1), “Yesterday Once More,” “Only Yesterday,” and “Goodbye to Love.” Bettis went on to a broader songwriting career, later co-writing hits such as Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” and Whitney Houston’s “One Moment in Time.”

Their collaboration produced some of the best-known soft-rock standards of the 1970s, cementing The Carpenters’ sound and contributing to Bettis’s induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2011.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bettis