THESE
DAYS
JACKSON
BROWNE
SONGWRITER: JACKSON BROWNE
COUNTRY: U. S. A.
ALBUM: TOGHETHER AGAIN(LIVE AT JABBERWOCKY, SYRACUSE
NY 27 MAR 1971)
LABEL: ROXVOX
GENRE: FOLK
YEAR: 1971
Clyde Jackson Browne(born October 9, 1948) is
an American singer-songwriter and musician who has sold over 18 million albums
in the United States.
Emerging as a precocious teenage songwriter
in mid-1960s Los Angeles, he had his first successes writing songs for others,
writing "These Days"
as a 16-year-old; the song became a minor hit for the German singer and Andy Warhol protégé Nico in 1967. He
also wrote several songs for fellow Southern California bands Nitty Gritty
Dirt Band(with whom he was briefly a member in 1966)
and the Eagles, the
latter of whom had their first Billboard Top 40 hit in 1972 with the Browne co-written song "Take It Easy".
Encouraged by his successes writing songs for
others, Browne released his self-titled
debut album in 1972, which spawned two Top 40
hits of his own, "Doctor, My Eyes"
and "Rock Me on
the Water". For his debut album, as well as for
the next several albums and concert tours, Browne started working closely with The Section, a
prolific session band that also worked with a number of other prominent
singer-songwriters of the era. His second album, For Everyman, was
released in 1973, and while it lacked an enduring single, has been
retrospectively assessed as some of his best work, appearing highly on several
"Best Album of All Time" lists. His third album, Late for the Sky, was his
most successful to that point, peaking at number 14 on the Billboard 200 album chart, and earning Browne his first Grammy nomination for
Album of the Year. His fourth album, The Pretender,
continued the pattern of each album topping the previous by peaking at number 5
on the album chart, and spawned the hit singles "Here Come
Those Tears Again" and "The Pretender".
It would be the 1977 album Running on
Empty, however, that would be his signature work,
peaking at number 3 on the album chart, and remaining there for over a year.
Both a live album and a concept album, the
songs on the album explore the themes of life as a touring musician, and the
album was recorded both on stage, and in places touring musicians spend time
when not playing, such as hotel rooms, backstage, and in one case on a moving tour bus. The
album produced two Top 40 singles, "Running on
Empty" and "The Load-Out/Stay",
and many of the other tracks became popular radio hits on the AOR format.
Successful albums continued through the
1980s, including the 1980 album Hold Out,
his only number 1 album, the non-album single "Somebody's Baby",
which was used in the film Fast Times at
Ridgemont High, and 1983's Lawyers in Love, which
included the hit single "Tender Is the
Night". In 1986, he released Lives in the
Balance, which had several radio hits and included
the introspective "In the Shape
of a Heart", which was inspired by the
suicide of his first wife a decade prior. His string of hit albums came to an
end at that point, as his next several albums failed to produce a gold or
platinum RIAA rating.
He released two compilation albums, The Next Voice You Hear: The Best of Jackson Browne in 1997, and The Very Best
of Jackson Browne, released in conjunction with
his Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame induction in 2004. His most recent
studio album is 2021's Downhill from
Everywhere, the follow-up to 2014's Standing in
the Breach, which included the first fully
realized version of his song "The Birds of
St. Marks", a song he had written at age 18. In
2015, Rolling Stone ranked him as 37th in its list of the "100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time".
"These Days" is a song written by Jackson Browne and recorded by numerous artists. Browne wrote the song at age 16;
its lyrics deal with loss and regret. It was first recorded by Nico in 1967 for her
album Chelsea Girl,
and Nico's arrangement was recorded by several other artists. Tom Rush recorded
the tune with a string arrangement for his album Tom Rush in 1970. Gregg Allman recorded a new arrangement of the song for his 1973 LP Laid Back, and
Browne released his own version, based on Allman's arrangement, on For Everyman, also in
1973. "These
Days" has since been recorded by many other artists, and remains one of
Browne's most enduring compositions.
According to Randall Roberts at the Los
Angeles Times, the song has "quietly become a classic" over the
years. Pitchfork Media's 2006
ranking of "The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s" placed the Nico
version of "These Days" at number 31
Well I've been out
walking
I don't do that much talking these days, these days
These days I seem to think a lot
About the things that I forgot to do
And all the times I had the chance to
And I had a lover
It's so hard to risk another of these days, these days
Now if I seem to be afraid
To live the life that I have made in song
Well it's just that I've been losing for so long
Well I'll keep on
moving, moving on
Things are bound to be improving these days, one of these days
These days I sit on corner stones
And count the time in quarter tones to ten, my friend
Don't confront me with my failures,
I had not forgotten them.
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