Essentials: The Top 10 Jackson Browne Albums

For what is now over six decades, the songs of Jackson Browne have become synonymous with the U.S. West Coast, in particular Los Angeles, his album’s a soundtrack for a post-war generation with a voracious appetite for the open-hearted literacy of the confessional singer-songwriter. During this period he has released fifteen studio albums, garnering copious amounts of critical plaudits, whilst selling well over eighteen million albums worldwide. So now would seem as good a time as any to take stock, and conduct an overview of what I consider to be ten of his finest albums, which encapsulate the different stages of his writing, embracing such topics as matters of the heart along with songs of a more social and political nature, but always written with a sense of dignity and justice.

Of the ten albums I have chosen the top five will offer up few surprises, except possibly the order, and even here, only the position of the top two gave me any sleepless nights. Therefore it was the choice of albums in the lower half of this list that has proved to be more challenging, reacquainting myself with those that in many cases had long become strangers, taking this opportunity to listen now with fresh ears and an open mind.

As with all these lists it is both subjective and of the moment, nothing is set in stone, and though I feel it may be less provocative than some that have previously graced this wonderful feature, I am sure there will still be many of you whose view will vary from mine, and I look forward to your thoughts.

Number 10: “Lawyers In Love” (1983).

Like many of his peers, Browne found the eighties a difficult decade to navigate but “Lawyers In Love”, offered many positives as he strove to widen his musical and lyrical perspective and find, albeit temporarily, an escape route from his role as the perennial romantic prestidigitator. The album was significant in being the first since his debut over a decade earlier to not feature guitarist David Lindley, being replaced by a combination of Rick Vito and Danny Kortchmar, but still became his fourth straight top 10 album with the title track reaching number 13 in the Billboard Hot 100. Following on from the disappointing “Hold Out”(1980), this album finds Browne aware that he needs to move forward from the confessional writings of his past, but unsure of what direction to take, tentatively testing the water before setting sail. In truth it would take him another decade to escape the doldrums and make dry land.

Number 9: “Standing In The Breach” (2014)

By the time of the release of “Standing In The Breach”, Browne had been a recording artist for over four decades, and long since recognised where his strengths lay. No longer prepared to apologise for wearing his heart on his sleeve, here on this his fourteenth album, Browne ably demonstrates that he has mastered the art of combining matters of the heart along with a social consciousness and political awareness. Perversely one of the album’s standout tracks is the opening number ‘The Birds Of St Marks’, a song he wrote while still only 18 years old on returning home to California after having spent some time living in New York where he worked and recorded with Nico, among others. Having rediscovered the song in 1994, it would first appear on his ‘Solo Acoustic Vol 1’, album in 2005, before being properly rerecorded for this album, Browne conceded that the song was massively influenced by The Byrds and here Greg Leisz plays 12 string guitar endeavouring to capture Roger McGuinn’s signature sound. Elsewhere ‘The Long Way Around’, is a wonderful and eloquent protest song against apathy, on an album that salutes the continued struggle of love and progress against an infinitely corrupt world.

Number 8: “The Naked Ride Home” (2002)

By the time of the release of his twelfth album Browne had spent the best part of two decades trying to reinvent himself, escaping the self-imposed chains of the undisputed king of the confessional singer-songwriter to explore topics more politically and socially affecting, whilst at the same time becoming a champion for the plight of the planet. However, with the release of “The Naked Ride Home”, there was a distinct sense that the search was over, and Browne was once again comfortable with both his past and purpose, albeit now flavoured with a sagacious edge garnered through the years in the wilderness. Here there is a real sense he has recaptured the precision within his songwriting craft, offering hidden depths that rewards repeated listenings. The lyrical rumination still draws from numerous wells that carefully balance domestic mysteries alongside political realities, and despite only writing four of the ten tracks on his own this still feels like a coming home album for Browne.

Number 7: “Downhill From Everywhere” (2021)

His most recent album, released at the seasoned age of 72, “Downhill From Everywhere”, ably demonstrated that Browne still possessed all the passion and fire of his youth. An intimate album that reinstates his mastery of uniting issues both personal and political, while still finding new avenues to explore. Supported by a stellar cast including longtime collaborators Greg Leisz and Bob Glaub the album consists of rocking numbers such as ‘Until The Justice Is Real’, with Browne informing the listener that if “You want the truth, you got to find it on your own”, to more reflective tracks like ‘A Little Soon To Say’, which harks back to the confessional songs that occupied so much of his 70’s output. Browne’s voice is still strong but throughout the album he is wonderfully supported by several female backing vocalists, each helping to alter the dynamics of the individual tracks without ever distracting from their intention or creating a sense of disunity. The title track tackles the detritus flow that pollutes our Oceans, while the dark humour of ‘My Cleveland Heart’, provides ample evidence that this elder statesman of his craft is still as invigorated and impassioned as ever.

Number 6: “I’m Alive” (1993)

Recorded in the proceeding months after the somewhat acrimonious breakup of his near 10 year relationship with film star Daryl Hannah, “I’m Alive” found Browne putting Third World and rain forest politics on hold to revisit the topic that served him so well some twenty years previous. Within the 10 tracks on this album he returned to matters of the heart, his heart, as he wrestled with the philosophical implications of romance, the personal joys and agonies of human interaction, and the perils of extreme intimacy. For many of the critics it was a triumphant return to “phrase making brilliance”, written without any lyrical collaboration, so personal was the subject matter that dripped with regret, accusations, bitterness, self-pity, and even a hint of gallows humour. He did however surround himself with a wonderful cast of musicians and singers including the unlikely duo of David Crosby and Don Henley on the track ‘All Good Things’, while Jennifer Warnes, Valerie Carter and Katia Cardenal all supply exquisite harmonies on ‘Too Many Angels’, as Browne repeatedly sings “Too many angels saw me crying. Too many angels heard you lying”.

Of course this was a landscape that Browne knew very well, he had long stared into the abyss and spent most of the following two decades trying to erase the memory, but now on ‘I’m Alive’, the disintegration of another relationship had unleashed a torrent of emotional confusion, creating an almost definitive catalogue of heartbreak songs for the jilted and the spurned. His loss was surely our gain.

Number 5: “Running On Empty” (1977)

This was Browne’s fifth album and last of the 70’s, a decade that had seen him rise to become the undisputed king of the self-confessional songwriters, it was also the album that signalled the impending changes, both within his writing and the wider world. Probably the most significant aspect of this album is that Browne was the sole writer on only two of the tracks, with four being co-writes, and four others being covers, whereas across his four previous albums there were only two co-writes in total, a fact that undeniably impacts a certain lack of cohesiveness throughout the ten tracks. That said, the two self-written numbers, the title track along with ‘You Love The Thunder’, are two of his finest and most popular songs, the former charting as high as number 11 on the charts, while the whole album was themed around life on the road, with all the tracks being recorded live with his band, ‘The Section’, either on stage, backstage, on the tour bus, or in the hotel room.

“Running On Empty”, would go on to win the Grammy for Album of the Year, becoming and remaining Browne’s biggest seller to date, and though many would argue that it was less ambitious that his previous work, it was undoubtedly his most accessible, tapping into the on-coming shift in cultural values as the smouldering embers of the 70’s were about to be doused by a new digitally clinical decade.

Number 4: “Jackson Browne” (1972)

Often mistakenly known as “Saturate Before Using”, due to the words being emblazoned across the cover (and down the spine when released on CD), Browne’s eponymous album was an auspicious debut that dared to broach difficult often personal subjects, but with an astute and eloquent use of language that immediately revealed a poetic soul. By the time of its release he had already announced his talent, having had songs recorded by the likes of Nico, Tom Rush, The Byrds and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and his accrued reputation enabled him to assemble some of L.A’s finest musicians, including Leland Sklar, Russ Kunkel, and Albert Lee, while established stars such as David Crosby, Graham Nash and Clarence White were all keen to come on board.

The album consists of some of Browne’s most endearing songs, already betraying a subtle use of melody and lyrical sagacity beyond his years, such as the opener ‘Jamaica Say You Will’, ‘Rock Me On Water’, and ‘Doctor My Eyes’, which would reach number 8 in the charts and later become a hit in the UK for The Jackson 5. Browne himself would have to wait another ten years to penetrate the top 10 singles chart, though in fairness his artistic endeavours and song craft were always of much greater priority, and even here on his debut release he managed to not only create a body of work that perfectly captured and expressed the period, but transcended it as well. Others may have already recorded his songs and many more would follow suit, but here on his first album he made a clear statement, ‘No-one does Browne better than Browne’.

Number 3: “For Everyman” (1973)

It was confirmation of Browne’s growing confidence in the studio that he chose to produce his sophomore album, which was released just 20 months after his debut, giving him the freedom to test his various talents across ten new songs, albeit three had been widely covered already. Nico, Tom Rush, and Greg Allman had all recorded ‘These Days‘, and Browne would later comment that it was Allman’s version which he felt really unlocked the power of the song, and which he tried to emulate. The album opened with his own version of ‘Take It Easy’, a co-write with Glen Frey which had already peaked at No’ 12 in the charts a few months earlier for The Eagles, whilst Rush had previously covered ‘Colors Of The Sun’.

Elsewhere the title track was a song of hope written in response to the David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Paul Kantner penned apocalyptic classic ‘Wooden Ships’, with Browne still hanging on to the Hippie’s mantra as it splintered into a new decade of fear and violence. Crosby is on hand here supplying harmony vocals while Elton John, credited as Rockaday Johnnie, plays piano on ‘Redneck Friend’, where Frey also lends support. Other luminaries in attendance included Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt, while the album marked the debut of multi-instrumentalist David Lindley’s long association with Browne.

Described by one critic as “an unique fusion of West Coast casualness and East Coast paranoia, easy going slang and painstaking precision, child’s-eyed romanticising and adults eye acceptance”, ‘For Everyman’ displayed a growing maturity within Browne’s development, and though not yet the finished article as a songwriter he had produced an album that was both intimate and universal, that truly lived up to its title.

Number 2: “Late For The Sky” (1974)

Possibly the most contentious positioning on this list, Browne’s third album is rightly seen as a quintessential masterpiece full of open-ended poetry and religious intensity that displayed a continuing growing maturity within his songwriting. Recorded in less than six weeks and at half the cost of its predecessor  on the insistence of impresario David Geffen, ‘Late For The Sky’ was co-produced with Al Schmitt and consists of just eight songs, five of them coming in at over five minutes in length. Among them, tracks such as ‘Fountain Of Sorrow’, with its lyrical figurative complexities, the apocalyptic dread of ‘Before The Deluge’, and the matter-of-fact poignancy of ‘For A Dancer’, have long become accepted as some of Browne’s finest work, and a touchstone for every aspiring songwriter that would follow. Elsewhere the title track that opens the album still displays all the uncertainty and self doubt in matters of the heart that flavoured so much of his previous two recordings, and though the relative sparseness of the production in part helps direct the focus towards the lyrical narrative there is, to these ears at least, a faint sense of emptiness that percolates throughout the album.

‘Late For The Sky’ is indeed a masterpiece, a classic recording that not only captures the period and the times but one that would change the very landscape and perception of what confessional singer-songwriting could achieve and what we as listeners would use as a barometer from here on in. However, though this album is definitely the pinnacle of his work to this point, there was still some growing up to do, as Browne’s poetry, even here, still has the tendency to drift towards a naive millenarianism. By now he had consistently proved over three albums that in matters of the heart he could truly talk the talk more eloquently and poetically than any that had gone before, but it would require another two years, during which time he would suffer the ultimate in heartbreak and loss for him to at last walk the walk. The next album would deliver a different Browne, one who had finally come off the bench, on to the field of play and taken the fall, finally able to look himself in the mirror and see past the scars to recognise the fool. An album that would complete the circle and signal the closing of a chapter.

Number 1: “The Pretender” (1976)

Back in the December of 2022 I waxed lyrically within these pages, (some might say excessively) about the virtues of this album, and why I consider it to be Browne’s ultimate piece of work. As alluded to previously, the intervening years between ‘The Pretender’, and its predecessor were filled with unimaginable heartache and grief as Browne’s wife, and mother to his young son, Phyllis Major, took her own life in March 1976. It is impossible to believe that the impact of such magnitude would not filter through into Browne’s writing and it is therefore unsurprising that much of the album focuses around the subject of death and parenthood.

Having had at least one hand on the production tiller on his last two albums, Browne chose this time to bring in Jon Landau fresh from his success with Bruce Springsteen’s “Born To Run”, who would deliver a much broader mix of musical styles and tempo than had appeared on previous recordings. At the time much was made of this fuller arrangement but in truth it is the change in Browne’s poetic narrative that most greatly effects the ambience of the album, announcing a lyrical culmination of all that had gone before.

Unlike ‘Late For The Sky’ there was no limit here on time or budget, with an eye-watering list of contributors on hand, including many of LA’s finest and most famous. The album itself is littered with classic Browne tracks, in fact ‘Classic Rock History’ critic Brian Kochejian rated three songs from the album ‘The Fuse’, ‘Here Comes Those Tears Again’, along with the title track, as “being among Browne’s ten greatest songs”, but added “just about every song from the album could have made this list”.  A statement that is indicative not just of the strength of each individual track but of the album as a whole .

What marks this album out as Browne’s finest piece of work is the maturity of the narrative, undoubtedly forced upon him by preceding events that saw a distinct shift away from the naive cynicism, apocalyptic imagery and self sensibility, to one of optimism and courage, less self-centred and more about the responsibilities of being both a father and a son.  Up to now Browne’s belief in romance had held firm against all else, but now those beliefs had been shattered, scattered to the four winds, everything he’d written before was destined to finish here, with this album and its closing title track, in my view his finest song. Yes, it is true, for all that had been gained during this period something uniquely precious had been lost, as from these fragments a new songwriter would emerge, shorn of his gullible boyish romanticism, to be replaced with a new focus that would eventually take aim at more political and environmental issues.