I OFFICIALLY DESPISE JAMES TAYLOR

Depends. Was he playing Angry Birds?

He's revered in Americana, so don't worry, the revival has been quietly gathering steam for a while. I have no idea what saying that Taylor is the "whitest artist ever" even means, btw. I can't take the guy for more than 10 minutes, but those 10 minutes are often sort of good. "Mexico" is his best song unless it's "Don't Let Me Be Lonely." I always heard the lyric in that one as "Go away, Ben Daniel," as if he were writing in the mode of the Band or something similar in the tune.

the most charitable thing i can say is that he reminds me slightly of Kermit

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WJoU2sTqslM

He's revered in Americana, so don't worry, the revival has been quietly gathering steam for a while. I have no idea what saying that Taylor is the "whitest artist ever" even means, btw. I can't take the guy for more than 10 minutes, but those 10 minutes are often sort of good. "Mexico" is his best song unless it's "Don't Let Me Be Lonely." I always heard the lyric in that one as "Go away, Ben Daniel," as if he were writing in the mode of the Band or something similar in the tune.

― eddhurt, Tuesday, February 6, 2018 12:11 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Whitest music* ever. Like his work embodies all of the cliche lazy comedian old white people music qualities: stiff, safe, inoffensive etc.

For me it's the most direct audio association to the image of a bunch of old rich white people in the suburbs snapping their fingers and bobbing their heads down at the local concert hall.

whitest comment ever

How old are you, Evan?

my soul or my body?

For me it's the most direct audio association to the image of a bunch of old rich white people in the suburbs snapping their fingers and bobbing their heads down at the local concert hall.

― Evan,

this could be a Metallica or Arcade Fire show tbh

Xp /r/lewronggeneration?

anyway, I was thinking about how Carolina in My Mind turns kind of dark in the last verse -- dogs that bite, omens, dark side of the moon, seems like it goes on like this forever, so that "going to Carolina in My Mind" seems to change from a metaphor for homesickness and nostalgia to a metaphor for slipping away from a sound mental state.

or could also be nodding from heroin

still cheesy, not sold

not a fan by any means but the song "late for the sky" is tops

The fact that he was a narcissistic self-absorbed junkie for years and years does tend to be overlooked.

that just makes him seem even more predictable imo

Inspired by this thread I'm listening to the LPs for the first time... with the caveat that my parents love this guy so his music was all over the place growing up. My dad never sings along to anything but he sings along to James Taylor.

The first truly bad moment on the first album was "Oh Baby, Don't You Loose Your Lip on Me". Embarrassing.

Two-Lane Blacktop made me appreciate him more but his music remains a bridge too far.

i trust those who tell me he's got dark corners to explore and interesting veins to mine if you look close enough but my bête noire is this exact type of '70s singer/songwriter folk, the comedown tracks on Freedom Rock type shit, in which the edges are mostly sanded off (to my ears.)

i like a couple of his standards but I mostly get a full of himself vibe. And the one time we saw him at a Bridge School Benefit he took a very imperious tone with the stagehands & it turned me off

i feel bad for those that have to sit through him at a live show to get to carole king THE G.O.A.T.

well yeah, he's no carole king for sure

I mean I grew up really detesting him, but I've been on a challenge-my-taste kick

dare I tackle John Denver next?

I prefer him to James Taylor tbf.

i can handle a decent taste-challenge but that doesn't include interest in james taylor. his music is boring.

listen to this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQnHAb_6sOs

i like john denver!!

For me it's the most direct audio association to the image of a bunch of old rich white people in the suburbs snapping their fingers and bobbing their heads down at the local concert hall.

this is really weird; I grew up in North Carolina and my primary association with James Taylor is "grew up in North Carolina and probably attended UNC"

(this also doubles as my excuse for really liking James Taylor)

in fact his dad was the dean of the UNC school of medicine

playing in the lobby? james taylor

― i gotta be a gazpacho man (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, February 6, 2018 4:33 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You know you're going to have to liveblog this

he is the essence of "large family vacation on the outer banks"

and i don't despise him but i don't see a possibility of liking his music in my future

TBH that sounds really appealing to me, I think I'm goin
goin
goin to carolina in my mind

xxpost, I also grew up in North Carolina & have a soft spot for JT despite forced exposure during my teens.

I hate him so much that flames flames one the sides of my face.

I have an irrational hatred for him and I've never been able to articulate why. Yes, he's boring as shit but so are lots of people and I don't hate them. I can't listen to or watch him for even a couple seconds. My co-worker/friend had a babby last year and named him James in part because of JT and so I've been calling him JT2 ever since. Not to her though.

james taylor: better than shag dancing

it's weird because I have an irrational hatred for everything else that falls under the "southern fraternity tailgate" category but not this

My wife attended a JT concert where she was next to a wasted dude who kept wanting the people in the row in front of them to sit down. Apparently he wanted to sit down for the show. During "Shower the People" wasted dude starting trying to light peoples' hair on fire, with some success.

That's the second most vivid music memory I haven't directly experienced. Number one would be a guy who saw someone killed in a bar fight while "Long Cool Woman" was on the jukebox.

I grew up in Massachusetts and always associated the Taylor clan with Cape Cod. Livingston showed up on local TV a lot, looking overwhelmed by life. But I'm in NC now and the "large family vacation" associations are spot on. Seems pretty malleable for anywhere on the east coast, or even lake cottages further inland, provided there are well-worn sweaters and boxes of chardonnay.

did James Taylor ever rock out? is there a lost or "weird period" album of his with synths or swamp rock style guitar?

wait that song is actually called "shower the people"?!
ugh

sweaters + booze otm
at the far end: matching outfits for photo shoots on the beach

All this stuff is so exotic to me as a northeast lifer jew with nerdy parents. I think JT might be the most goyish non-Nashville music.

it's not familiar to me either, aside from pictures i see of other people's vacations

fairly or unfairly i file him along w/Harry Chapin and other sincerecore folk types which remind me of my childhood, raised on such music all the damn time.

i mentally filed him in the same folder as jimmy buffett

> did James Taylor ever rock out?

Doesn't he belt "motherfucker" Blueshammer style at the end of a bluesy number. It it called Steamroller? I do not want to check.

I've never listened to any James Taylor other than what I've heard on the radio but he was apparently _the_ nice guitar-playing sensitive man of my mom's peer group and she definitely had a crush on him

I'm sure if he ever "rocked out" it'd still be appropriate as background music for any typical dentist's office waiting room

xp I never looked it up to correlate, but apparently his breakthrough album came out around the time she was graduating high school

I should have known

jimmy buffett only + emo, +family

one time in early hs i went to a church youth group weekend with my friends. i was not a member of the group, i just wanted to meet new people, spend the weekend away from home.
we were asked to sing "you've got a friend" at the beginning and end of the weekend. i found it extremely embarrassing since i only knew my 2 friends i had gone to the retreat with and had a hard time singing "you've got a friend" to a bunch of total strangers, or feeling any feelings that they were singing it to me. i had exactly 2 friends there, singing wasn't going to change anything. that wasn't even the dumbest part of the retreat, and i tried to get over my dislike of the experience but it did not fade!

I didn't want to but it did look it up

http://www.infinitelooper.com/?v=kfzMLRzH2yw&p=n#/312;323