James Taylor: Greatest Hits

500 CDs You Must Own Before You Die! (500 items)
list by JxSxPx

James Taylor certainly isn't the only mellow man to have ever picked up a guitar-- you can listen to the Beach Boys for a very long time indeed without worrying about anything or stressing-- but James makes his music really therapeutic. Maybe it's because of his deep personal experience with depression, that his music is especially capable of serving as a coping mechanism when the simple frustrati... read more

Description: James Taylor's mid-'70s departure from Warner Bros. may be one of the best things that ever happened to the label; otherwise, it might not have been in such a rush to compile his Greatest Hits, one of the company's biggest sellers ever at 11 million and counting. Taylor's style, which all but defines the word diffident, has more backbone than it's often given credit for. Here, as surprisingly complex songs like "Carolina in My Mind" (in a newly recorded version) and "Steamroller" stack up, he sounds like an artist worth spending some time with. At the least, few of his singer-songwriter cohorts came up with
James Taylor's mid-'70s departure from Warner Bros. may be one of the best things that ever happened to the label; otherwise, it might not have been in such a rush to compile his Greatest Hits, one of the company's biggest sellers ever at 11 million and counting. Taylor's style, which all but defines the word diffident, has more backbone than it's often given credit for. Here, as surprisingly complex songs like "Carolina in My Mind" (in a newly recorded version) and "Steamroller" stack up, he sounds like an artist worth spending some time with. At the least, few of his singer-songwriter cohorts came up with a melody as lovely as "Sweet Baby James." --Rickey Wright

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