A Year of Blind Spots: Late for the Sky

The first game you play when you start listening to a blind spot that you literally know nothing about besides that they are a name that you've heard before, and surmise are important but that's it, is: "Alive or dead?" Jackson Browne, according to Wikipedia, is still alive. You can tell because the first line in the article is "Jackson Browne is an American singer-songwriter and musician," not "Jackson Browne was an American singer-songwriter and musician." Alright, cool. Alive.

The next thing you do is simply keep reading the Wikipedia article. They usually have some good information, since the whole reason they are a "blind spot" is that they are popular, and your own ignorance is on you, not on the artist or on the Wikipedia author, and so there's gonna be a lot written, more likely than not. Additionally, a lot of that info that you gather from Wikipedia is going to be info that makes you exclaim something like: "Holy shit, that was him?!"

I was vaguely aware of the songwriting credits for some Eagles hits, and I was informed by Pam that Browne has a song on the Fast Times at Ridgemont High soundtrack, so neither of those tidbits were too scintillating. No, the thing that smacked me across the face was the fact that the first song Jackson Browne penned (at age sixteen!) that became a big hit was "These Days," as covered by Nico.

I flash back to when I'm seventeen, and I'm standing in front of my peers on Kairos, and after I give my prepared speech, I start crying and hugging everybody, and meanwhile my chosen closing song, Nico's "These Days," plays over and over and over. I know, I know, there's a lot to be said about how in the past sixteen years my opinions of Nico and about Kairos and about the lack of acknowledgment of my privileged upbringing have all curdled in my mind to varying degrees, but still! At one point in time, this song was extremely important to me! And it turns out that Jackson Browne fucking wrote it!

I haven't even gotten to talking about today's album yet, but I suppose, knowing all this, my short Saturday thesis for this blog post should already be obvious: Many of the songs on Late for the Sky are slow and could theoretically boring, but Jackson Browne appears to have a supernatural ability to tap into deep, heartfelt emotions, even at the tempo I least prefer. I have, after all, cried to a Jackson Brown song, as it turns out.

I didn't quite get to the crying part for Late for the Sky, but during my various listens this week, I was able to tap into something deeper than I would typically for a week of cursory listening. This has as much to do with Browne's voice as it does his songwriting. I wouldn't be able to start describing it if I tried, but something about the timbre cuts right to the bone. This is some sad lonesome cowboy shit, even if it barely has anything to do with country music at all. Maybe it's sad lonesome cowboy shit for the modern man. It's probably not a coincidence that "For a Dancer" was played at two dead SNL alumni's funerals (this is less a "holy shit" Wikipedia moment, and more of a "hmmm" Wikipedia moment).

Not to say that the entire album is comprised of tearful manly ballads. "The Road and the Sky" and "Walking Slow" have some grit and some strut to them, and in anyone else's hands, these would be the clear standouts. But Jackson Browne, in this short amount of time in my life, was able to reverse the standard operating procedure. Slow is good. Sad is good. Who knew?

This might ultimately be one of those good Blind Spot albums that doesn't inspire any deeper dives into the discography. Not that it isn't good enough. More likely that it feels special in some still undiscovered ways, and I want to hold it back and keep it safe. Exploring other albums, with, say, an Eagles song or a goddamn Fast Times song, might shatter the illusion that there is something precious here, something I couldn't even begin to plumb the depths of in a week's time. Or maybe it was just a weird ass week.

All I know is that I entered the week not knowing anything about Jackson Browne's existence, including whether or not he still existed on this mortal coil at all. Now I'm leaving the week feeling changed in some way, some indescribable way, and I'd rather just say I need more time here than continue on down the path any farther.