Being raised during the 80’s I cut my musical teeth on such musical sources as the Police, The Talking Heads, Devo, The Fixx. Then I was mainly a new wave fan, I have actually moved on to music that isn't almost 20 years old-but I still have a great collection of disks. At one of my previous jobs my boss introduced me to the mellow sounds of James Taylor. I really resisted at first, anything that didn’t have synthesizers or people with spiky hair really did not interest me. I mean really, James Taylor is essentially just a folk singer, right? So he forced me to listen to James Taylor in the morning, and I forced him to listen to listen to All Things Considered on NPR in the afternoon. I finally saw the light, he’s not just some folk singer, he’s just simply a good musician. There are certain artists that are so good it does not matter if they don’t sing your style of music, you just have to like them-James Taylor and Tony Bennett are the two I always think of as being that good.
He’s got a voice like butter that anyone can sing with. His songs are filled with the sort of things that bring us all together, family, love and of course, the occasional song about sex(that’s where the families come from).

My boss and I would listen to his incredible 2 cd live collection all day long, and when it got slow in the office we would sing and harmonize to songs like Mexico,Shower the People, She Thinks I Still Care (an awesome, twangy George Jones cover), Country Road, and Sweet Baby James. Imagine, singing in the office together with your coworkers…pretty cool.

So I bought my own James Taylor's Greatest Hits cd that I put on anytime I’m stressed, and my former boss now listens to NPR in the afternoon, guess we both changed our tastes.

By the way, JT's new release October Road is as good if not better than some of his old stuff-really worth checking out.