Skip to main content
ad info

  entertainment > music
 
  Editions | myCNN | Video | Audio | Headline News Brief | Feedback

 

  Search
 
 

 
ENTERTAINMENT
TOP STORIES

(MORE)

TOP STORIES

More than 11,000 killed in India quake

Mideast negotiators want to continue talks after Israeli elections

(MORE)

MARKETS
4:30pm ET, 4/16
144.70
8257.60
3.71
1394.72
10.90
879.91
 


WORLD

U.S.

POLITICS

LAW

TECHNOLOGY

HEALTH

TRAVEL

FOOD

ARTS & STYLE



(MORE HEADLINES)
*
 
CNN Websites
Networks image


'Greatest Hits, Volume 2' a recent release

James Taylor appreciates past, anticipates future

graphic
The release of "Greatest Hits 2" caps a banner year for James Taylor: he was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame and into the songwriters Hall Of Fame, as well as honored by Billboard Magazine with a Century Award  

NEW YORK (CNN) -- For a man out promoting a greatest-hits album, James Taylor is doing a good job of saying the kinds of things that would make a record company executive cringe.

"Whether or not they're, uh, my greatest hits, or great enough, or hits enough ..." his soft voice trails off.

"You know," he continues, brightening, "the Beatles album, '1,' is a greatest-hits album with, like, 27 No. 1 hit singles.

"Uh, this (his album), is a, uh, you know, a sampler."

Granted, "James Taylor: Greatest Hits, Volume 2," a compilation of 16 tracks recorded over the past two decades or so that he's been associated with Columbia records, will have a tough time matching the sales of its predecessor. "Greatest Hits, Volume 1," released in 1976, has sold more than 10 million copies in the United States alone.

But with songs such as "Secret O' Life," "Your Smiling Face," and "Her Town Too," the second volume will be a must for serious fans of Sweet Baby James.

It caps a year in which the 52-year-old Massachusetts native was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (by Paul McCartney, who in 1968 made Taylor the first signing of the Beatles' Apple record label). Taylor this year also was mustered into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, as well as honored by Billboard Magazine with a Century Award.

Taylor recently spoke with CNN about the muse that drives him.

CNN: If there ever was a time for you to just disappear, it would be right now.

graphic
Taylor is planning a world-wide tour to promote his next album, due in summer 200  

James Taylor: That's right, knowing when to quit is probably a very important thing, but I just am not ready. ... But I'm in the studio now making a new studio album, so that will come out this summer, and we'll tour it. We'll take it around the world.

CNN: Paul Simon recently said he feels like some sort of medium, that songs come from somewhere through. That may sound a bit self-important on a surface level, but how else do you explain where songs come from?

Taylor: It's true. I think he's right, you know: They do seem to just show up in some mysterious way, and it's a direct communication, like a direct line through. ... I think there are like two phases to writing a song.

One is very intuitive, very uncontrolled; it just sort of just happens. And then there's a period where you have to go back and employ a certain craft, a certain method on it, figure it out, and elaborate on it.

CNN: Do you think the songs originate with God?

Taylor: Well, I don't know much about God, so it's difficult to say "Yeah," but if everything does originate with God, then certainly songs do as well. ... You know, I don't think anyone really says anything new. It's the same 12 notes, it's the same basic harmonic structure -- or it's a variation on it -- and the things that are being expressed are human emotions, human experiences.

graphic
'Greatest Hits 2' includes 16 songs and is a sequel to his 1976 collection that has sold 11 million copies  

... You know, somehow it helps just to take something that's internal and externalize it, to see it in front of you, to have it be there as identifiable as something that was part of you, but now is somehow outside of you. And I think, ideally, that that really makes something that other people really resonate with.

... (W)ithout getting too cosmic, I basically think that people are isolated because of the nature of human consciousness, and they like it when they feel the connection between themselves and someone else. So anything that gives them that kind of root, or that kind of oneness with that commonly held experience, or whatever you want to call it -- or God, or however you want to define it -- it makes you hum. It's really good.

CNN: What other creative endeavors do you engage in? Do you paint or sketch?

Taylor: No, this is pretty much it. Aside from just really typical recreational things, all I really do is music, and maybe that's one of the reasons why it's so vital to me. It's so important because I don't really have many other outlets, and it tends to concentrate my focus on that.

CNN: Is there any one song on "Greatest Hits, Volume 2" that is more special to you than the others?

Taylor: No, no one song. I like the last one, "It's Enough To Be On Your Way," the most recent one that I wrote, because I think it's a great song, and I think it's fresh. But "Never Die Young," or "Copper Line," or "Only A Dream In Rio" -- these, when I play them, or when I hear them, I go back to the place where I was when I wrote them, and they reconnect me, hook me up.

CNN: Perhaps a "Greatest Hits, Volume 3" will be a topic of conversation at some point in the near future?

Taylor: Well, let's see. Twenty years from now? Maybe!



RELATED STORIES:
Rock's big night: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2000 inductees
March 6, 2000
Serenading songwriting Hall of Famers
June 19, 2000
Star of Tomorrow: Sally Taylor
November 1, 2000

RELATED SITES:
Columbia Records' James Taylor
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: James Taylor

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window
External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.

 Search   


Back to the top  © 2001 Cable News Network. All Rights Reserved.
Terms under which this service is provided to you.
Read our privacy guidelines.