Carole King isn't a technically outstanding singer, but her voice is compelling. She's a bit of an outlier, and someone whose songs have been regularly covered by men.

But how many men could cover a Kate Bush song without it being ridiculous?

Tin Pan Alley was still more individually driven than what we have today where a tune is passed around between as many as 10-20 producer/songwriters who add some technical candy to the mix. Many of these songs lack bridges or even choruses, and are highly assisted by technology. T-Pain made it big because he mastered Auto-Tune very early, for example.