It seems safe [now], if somewhat brash, to make a claim: Jackson Browne is the most important American songwriter since Bob Dylan and is perhaps as true a voice of the 70's as we are going to hear. The claim requires apologias on several fronts. The first is that Browne is nowhere near so loose, prolific or wide-ranging as Dylan, and we still have not seen all that much of his work yet….

Like most performers who transcend their genre, Jackson Browne often seems more a symbol than an artist. Singer/songwriter fans find in him the fulfillment of the style's promise: Browne's songs really do merge poetic vision and rock. But there are also those … who find the genre symptomatic of all of rock's current weaknesses. Browne is the epitome of everything they find disagreeable, both lyrically and musically. It is odd that Browne is surrounded by such certainty of opinion...

[Browne] writes and sings untiringly and without restraint about all the broken promises, the canceled appointments, the quintessential assumptions that have fallen through—all the pathetic kinks in the human condition. It's been four albums and a lot of arid miles since the 28-year-old Browne first took a bow "Under the Falling Sky" on his debut Jackson Browne "waterbag" lp. More than ever, the leading songwriter of the '70s sounds like he could use a cool d...

Jackson Browne is his own best chronicler. The profile has yet to be written which reveals him as incisively, or with as much love for language, as Browne does himself. His struggles with love, mortality, innocence and the fall from grace have rung so true, and been described with such real yet elevated phrases, that he has become a man-child pioneer. The life and situations he has described have been close enough to a middle-class universal for both the sensitive and the banal to feel he knows their person...

It's hard not to love Jackson Browne, even if you're not a teenage girl who can't believe how cute he is. Because the power of his songs extends beyond their compact, bittersweet appeal. They consistently express moods and emotions many of us have felt but couldn't conjure up the words to describe. Yet there is something about [Late for the Sky] that irks me. Something about what Jackson does and where he is going, or better, where he is not going, is beginning to show. (p. 74) [...

Like Browne's two previous albums, Late for the Sky contains no lyric sheet. The three or four hours required to make a full transcription will, however, be well worth the effort for anyone interested in discovering lyric genius. I can't think of another writer who merges with such natural grace and fluidity his private and public personas in a voice that is morally compelling yet noncoercive. Late for the Sky, Jackson Browne's third … album, is his most mature, conceptually unif...

[Browne's] debut set I loved—"Jamaica Say You Will," "Song For Adam" and, especially, "Doctor My Eyes" and "Rock Me On The Water" were superb songs. The majority of those songs were the up-tempo part of the album—Jackson's rather mono-toned vocals became depressingly morbid on the slow songs. The same conditions prevail on his second album ["For Everyman"]. Both sides open with a fast 'un. The Eagles�...