Songfacts®:

• A very sensual song, this piano-driven cut is the first track on Carole King's classic Tapestry album, which spent nearly six years on the chart, thanks in large part to women who bought the album en masse. While the song has a risqué feel (at least by 1971 standards), King never used sex appeal in her marketing, which earned her a great deal of respect with women who could relate to her songs and outlook.
  
  The earthquake metaphor can be seen as King's musical coming out, opening her album with confidence and setting the stage for a new sound. With a piano hook and very forthright lyrics, it certainly makes a statement.
• There is some confusion over whether "I Feel the Earth Move" was a #1 hit. Given its upbeat nature, King's record label selected it as the A-side of Tapestry's first single. However, after a few weeks of continuous airplay many DJs began to give the slower, lamenting B-side "It's Too Late" a lot of spins. It came to the point where "It's Too Late" dominated and ended up topping the Hot 100 chart by May of 1971. Billboard has since declared the record a double A-side and it is generally listed as such in books and articles that both songs reached #1 on the chart.
• This was used in the movie Terms of Endearment. It was also used in an episode of the TV show Eli Stone.
• The pop singer Martika covered "I Feel the Earth Move" as the follow-up to her #1 hit "Toy Soldiers." Her dance/rock version reached #25 in the US and #7 in the UK. It also charted high in Australia, Japan and Spain and a number of other countries.
• Eternal, an R&B girl group from the UK, sang this on the 1995 album Tapestry Revisited: A Tribute to Carole King.
• During the recording of Tapestry, King was working in A&M Studios, specifically in Studio B. Next door, in Studio C, Joni Mitchell was recording her Blue album and had a red Steinway piano in her studio. King noticed this Steinway had a tone she found especially appealing. When Mitchell finished and vacated the studio, King and her band had a three-hour window to use Studio C, and they recorded "I Feel The Earth Move" on that very Steinway piano.