Jackson Browne

Jackson Browne has been a potent songwriter since the Velvet Underground's Nico recognized his talent as a teenager in Greenwich Village. Four decades later, he's an ageless singer/songwriter who translates passion and politics into songs of enduring power. It makes sense to start with his early '70s output on [i]Jackson Browne[/i] and [i]For Everyman[/i].

Jackson Browne might be the archetypal, if introspective, Californian rocker, but his music stretches out around the world to give a voice to everyone who's yearning for freedom and love. His '80s material — on [i]Lawyers in Love[/i], [i]Lives in the Balance[/i], and [i]World in Motion[/i] — marked a shift from the personal to the universal, with an activist edge.

Like the songwriting legends who are his only equals, Jackson Browne crafts every record with an attention to detail that ensures his longer album tracks reward multiple listenings. "Before the Deluge" and "Fountain of Sorrow" appear on his third album, [i]Late for the Sky[/i]. Each clocks in at over six minutes, and not a second wasted.

Literate and perceptive, natural-born tunesmith Jackson Browne is up there with the greatest of West Coast songwriters to emerge in the '70s, always painfully honest as he translates the world's and his own troubles into brilliant, lasting rock compositions. His clear-eyed vision of life works as well in the classic pop-rock format (he co-wrote the Eagles' hit "Take It Easy") as it does given a more laid-back, folksy interpretation. One of the great American rock talents.