I OFFICIALLY DESPISE JAMES TAYLOR

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

at the far end: matching outfits for photo shoots on the beach

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Tuesday, February 6, 2018 2:48 PM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^ I also have an irrational hatred for these.

I drive by Maclean Hospital pretty often and every time I do he pops into my head and I get angry. Ugh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEBgECxtQjQ

Oh no the semi-colon in that link subjects you to the whole five minutes, let's try this again

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

James taylor looks like a slightly miffed Richard Jenkins when he's rocking out

i am not moved by that rendition of road runner
it's nice that he is having fun -- i just have a hard time thinking that "james taylor is having a good time" is reason enough to get over how much i can't stand his music

he looks a little like ian mackaye there

At the bar last weekend there was some 70s playlist going and JT’s “mexico” played along side Steely Dan’s “night by night.” Same planet, different worlds.

I hate "Mexico" fwiw

I officially despise this song!

I still only know that one from National Lampoon's Vacation.

You're in for a treat.

TBF "You've Got a Friend" is a Carole King song, not JT. Having grown up with a family who played a lot of JT I have to admit I have a liking for quite a few of his songs - "Carolina In My Mind" (quite a dark song as mentioned upthread), "Sweet Baby James", "Millworker" et al. When he's anodyne he grates, but there's something more there.

as was noted somewhere upthread, he's a first-rate guitarist

he's seen rain

what is that "something more"? i feel like he is that guy who is given the benefit of the doubt for being smarter and better and more skilled than he really is when he doesn't do anything I can directly identify to show he deserves this generosity.

if it's nostalgia motivating most people's affection for him, that's valid and ok -- but it's subjective and personal and not related to his actual musical output (which has yet to distinguish itself to me)

apols about "you've got a friend" -- the version we had to sing along with was the JT version

I never knew James Taylor was the Outer Banks Jimmy Buffett! my family only ever went vacationing in east central Florida when I was growing up & I don't think they fuck w/Sweet Baby James as much down there

I don't know much of his music aside from the biggest hits; I can't even remember how "You've Got A Friend" goes. His version of "How Sweet It Is" is p decent imo

xp the "something more" is a darkness I perceive in his otherwise-sweet music. I'm occasionally moved by his songs in a way that, say, Billy Joel never does for me, an artist with whom I have the same or even greater familial nostalgia connection.

Adding to what I said five years ago: "Fire and Rain," by itself, is worth more to me than Billy Joel's entire recorded output (it's that perfect, and he's that mediocre).

Yeah I'll never change my mind about Billy Joel. All his attempts at dark just read as butthurt.

I guess I'm also a sucker for that sort of "beneath the surface" stuff, where a song that ostensibly sounds like vanilla lovemaking by the fireplace has some demons lurking in it.