Recommendations of the Editorial team
The best songwriters of all time – 37th place: Jackson Browne
Musically (and perhaps visually) he was the picture-book Californian songwriter. Over the course of a long career, Jackson Browne also proved that he constantly reassessed the boundaries of songwriting.
He examined his own life, from the precocious “These Days” (which he wrote when he was 16) to newer songs like “The Night Inside Me.” Jackson Browne also addressed social injustice (“Lawyers In Love”) and political protest (“Lives In The Balance”).
Jackson Browne – “Lawyers in Love”:
But no matter what subject he dealt with, Browne always had a thoughtful, self-questioning approach, which he once described (in “Looking East”) as “the search for the truth.”
“My music deals with fundamental human experiences,” he told Rolling Stone in 1976. “But I approach the subject by articulating my very own truths.”
Glenn Frey honors his colleague
However, in songs like “Running On Empty” and “Boulevard” he also proved that – more than most of his sensitive colleagues – he could always press the accelerator.
“I learned to write songs by listening to Jackson through his ceiling and my floor,” Glenn Frey recalled of the time he lived in an apartment directly above Browne. “You have to be willing to shed sweat, invest a lot of time, torture your brain – and stubbornly pursue this goal.”
ROLLING STONE editor Arne Willander judged Brown: “In his first records, Browne had a natural beauty, a wonderful naivety. I mean: he was the man who accompanied Nico at her concerts in New York after Lou Reed had left her. You have to imagine this: how the barely legal Californian handsome boy comforted the drug-addicted German Valkyrie. “Saturate Before Using” and “For Everyman” could hardly stand because of their inwardness and poetry.”