HT Contributor Eliot Glazer has tremendously terrible taste in music. But he’s an adroit wordsmith, and he’s gonna try to convince us that the bad is really good.
Now I may not have been a cool kid by any means, but my parents — your everyday liberal Jewish boomers — knew how to keep their oldest son’s musical taste in check.
As a product of the[ir] times, I listened to Carly Simon, Harry Chapin, Carole King, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell…basically any North American who owned a musical instrument and experienced mild depression between 1970 and 1982 (one might not necessarily include Billy Joel among those folksters, but one wouldn’t realize that I grew up on Long Island, where knowing all the words to “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant” is as natural as giving the finger on the L.I.E.).
James Taylor was always, and continues to be, a staple of my musical taste. From his genuinely formative early records to his more recent albums that seamlessly compliment the “elegant yet comfortable” interior of a Williams Sonoma, Taylor’s got his routine down to a science. He doesn’t take risks, but there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with that (look at Norah Jones, three records, eight Grammys, and a cool bajillion dollars later). Every summer when JT plays at Jones Beach, my mom drags my dad along who, although he’s as much a fan as I am, often jokes that he should “bring a blanket and pillow” to the show. Ah, some things never change.
Read on for more I Love Bad Music and a fancy, streamable JT track…
