_New York Times_
September 12, 1997.

JAMES TAYLOR: Lullabies and Little Sighs, With Memories
    By Neil Strauss

New York:  James Taylor fell victim to his own predictability Wednesday night
at the Theater at Madison Square Garden. Introducing his song "Frozen Man,"
he announced, "I got this idea from--"

But before he could complete his monologue, an audience member yelled,
"National Geographic!" Taylor persevered with his introduction, growing more
and more flustered as laughter exploded sporadically throughout the theater
from fans who had heard it all before.

The more Taylor tried to improvise his story to make it seem new to his
audience, the less coherent he became.

Newness is not Taylor's forte. The world needs Taylor the way it needs
cocktail stirrers and paper doilies, as a sign that everything's normal and
taken care of. Fans look to him for comfort and predictability, for a
rational and timeless balm for loneliness, confusion, and mortality.

But predictability isn't necessarily bad. We need predictability--clocks,
sunrises, the knowledge that certain actions will produce rewards or
punishment--to survive. And that's what Taylor's music is all about,
particularly his new album, "Hourglass" (Columbia), written after the deaths
of his brother, his father, and a longtime collaborator, Don Grolnick, and
the breakup of his second marriage. To cope with grief, he seeks solace in
the dependable and eternal. "The sun shines on this funeral," he sings in
"Enough to Be on Your Way."  "The same as on a birth/The way it shines on
everything."

"Hourglass " is vintage James Taylor from the very first word, "I" (signaling
the confessional singer-songwriter style he pioneered) to the second word,
"remember" (a confession of someone attached to their past), to the third and
fourth words, "Richard Nixon" (the calling cards of a true-blue baby boomer).

Where most songwriters see themselves as special, the key to Taylor's
sustained success is that he sees himself as nothing special or out of the
ordinary, but as something essential, like sunshine or rain. He constantly
humbled himself in introducing his soft, sentient songs, describing them as
"just you basic singer-songwriter stuff," "another generic road song" and
demurring that "very little went into writing this one."

Though Taylor has a remarkably versatile voice, he likes to stay in the reedy
lullaby range that his fans recognize.

Backed by four musicians, and four backup singers, he played the songs
everyone expected of him ("Carolina in My Mind," "Fire and Rain," "You've Got
A Friend," "Sweet Baby James" and so on). In fact, halfway through the show,
he showed the audience his set list (written in large letters for the
sight-impaired) so that it knew what to expect.

The only suprise was when he was joined by another icon of predictability,
Jimmy Buffet. And predictably, America's patron saint of warm-weather tourism
helped Taylor sing the sun-craving vacation ode "Mexico."