I’m going to rent myself a house in the shade of a freeway… February 4
I think that it is odd that my return to blogging is a post about Jackson Browne, but what can you do? For some reason I have been thinking a lot about Jackson Browne’s music recently.
My father has said that Jackson Browne only ever wrote one song in his career, and that he just keeps changing the lyrics to it. While that statement might be unnecessarily cruel, I don’t think it wrong. His songs do blend together after a while, I just happen to feel like it is a really good song. What I really love about Jackson Browne’s “song” is the major key sadness that he creates, that I think is unique to his music.
I think that a lot of people are turned off to Jackson Browne because his music has a laid-back, almost non-emotive, 70s feel to it. I think that the strength of Jackson Browne’s music is that very same quality. He never writes about anything that one would great truly angry or worked up about. There are no great tragedies in a Jackson Browne song, just everyday compromises and miscommunications. As I wrote before, I find myself increasingly drawn to songs where the music supports and illuminates the lyrics, and Jackson Browne’s “song” is an excellent marriage of words and music. I don’t have an instrument in front of me, so I can’t verify this, but every Jackson Browne song should be in the key of C (no sharps or flats).
When Bruce Springsteen inducted Jackson Browne into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he told Don Henley that Jackson Browne songs are songs that the Eagles wished they had written. I think that the contrast between Eagles songs and Jackson Browne sons is illuminating. Eagles songs have the same laid-back, 70s feel to them, but they are all about girls in flat-bed Fords, crazy-old nights, and peaceful easy feelings. This is why the Eagles are profoundly irritating. In “The Pretender,” that same predictable, major key, mid-tempo feel make the song particularly tragic because the what the speaker is experiencing and feeling is both unremarkable and universal.
Photo by Flickr user stewart.