You Don’t Know Jackson: Counting Down Jackson Browne’s 5 Definitively Finest Albums

There are few singer/songwriters who have been as consistently brilliant as Jackson Browne over his storied career. Even before he was releasing his own material, he was already highly respected as a songwriting prodigy of sorts, penning tracks covered by major artists while he was barely out of his teens. Once he became an artist in his own right in the ‘70s, he displayed both his copious instrumental talents and his soulful singing voice in service of his piercing songwriting.

Browne hasn’t stopped entrancing us since. We won’t dare to call this countdown of his finest albums definitive, because he’s still very active and could easily drop another one in the same league as these knockout LPs. Let’s just say that these are his best five Jackson Browne albums for right now, while admitting we might have to adjust the list down the road.

5. I’m Alive (1993)

Throughout the ‘80s, Browne focused on topical material and largely eschewed the personal songwriting that was his trademark in the previous decade. He returned to his ‘70s wheelhouse on I’m Alive, which was in part a reaction to the end of his longtime relationship with actress Daryl Hannah.

The album muses with a kind of aching grace about how the wisdom gained by years can’t prevent the mistakes that lead to heartache. There’s an icy wind blowing through “Too Many Angels” and gallows humor lacing “My Problem Is You.” Browne also summons the kind of self-aware eloquence of his finest work on tracks like “Sky Blue and Black” and “Two of Me, Two of You,” the deft metaphors and turns of phrase piling up like so many teardrops.

4. Jackson Browne (1972)

Browne came out of the gate firing on his debut. (You’ll sometimes see this album called Saturate Before Using because that phrase is found on the cover.) Of course, he was already a veteran of sorts thanks to his songwriting and musician-for-hire experiences. And even at the tender of age of 23 (which he was when this album dropped), he was able to view love and loss with uncanny maturity. Slow ones like “Jamaica Say You Will,” “Looking into You,” and “My Opening Farewell” came forth from him with a seeming effortlessness that only the best possess. He even showed some pop savvy with the bouncy (albeit still world-weary) “Doctor, My Eyes.” At no point do you listen to this album and think “debut”; it’s just way too accomplished for that.

3. Running on Empty (1977)

Circa 1977, Browne couldn’t bear the thought of the old album-tour cycle perpetrating itself again, so he decided to combine the two elements. The songs on Running on Empty were new, but they were all recorded live in locations ranging from the stage in front of thousands to cramped hotel rooms.

[RELATED: 5 Songs You Didn’t Know Jackson Browne Wrote for Other Artists]

Browne penned songs about life on the road that managed to transcend the concept, so that anyone listening who was feeling a bit run down by life could relate. The title track deservedly became a generational anthem, the cover songs are telling, and Browne, of course, slips a few winning slow ones (“Rosie,” “Love Needs a Heart”) in there as well. Then he sends us all home smiling with “The Load Out/Stay,” making it seem like all the sacrifices made on the road for the music were worth it.

2. The Pretender (1976)

Browne’s ’70s material always tended to the downcast, but The Pretender is real dark-night-of-the-soul stuff, even with producer Jon Landau trying to prop it up with bouncy horns and sweeping strings. Despite his soaring career, Browne was struggling to make sense of how he and others of his generation had given up their ideals and settled for the path of least common resistance, as the title track sums up.

His personal life also seemed to bewilder him, with tracks like “Here Comes Those Tears Again,” “Daddy’s Tune” and “Sleep’s Dark and Silent Gate” (the latter inspired by the then-recent suicide of his first wife) reaching for answers and coming up dry, even as the results of the search made for moving listening.

1. Late for the Sky (1974)

Like so many other brilliant artists, Browne found the sweet spot while recording his third album and delivered his masterpiece. The lyrical deftness; those melodies always rising to bittersweet peaks, and Browne at the center of it all; his elongating vowel sounds right to the breaking point to let the feelings seep in even deeper: it all adds up to an overwhelming onrush of feeling.

As Browne undergoes the self-searching of songs like the title track, “Fountain of Sorrow, Fountain of Light” and “For a Dancer,” we, the listeners, find ourselves asking the same questions and making the same connections in our own lives. On closing track “After the Deluge,” Browne asks us to look at the world and the people around us, suggesting that community and empathy might be the only way to save ourselves, even as David Lindley’s fiddle gets buffeted about by the flood. An absolute masterwork of a record.

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