James Taylor Edges Taylor Swift For First #1 Album Ever
It’s been four decades in the making, but James Taylor’s persistence paid off: the Billboard 200’s #1 album is now James Taylor’s Before This World, with 97,000 copies sold last week. The woman he beat out, coincidentally, was named after the veteran musician; Taylor Swift, who flooded the number #1 spot with her “1989” masterpiece, indeed received her first name from James Taylor.
As predicted by Inquisitr writer Daryl Deino, Swift and Adam Lambert just didn’t have the momentum James Taylor enjoyed last week during his first week, ending a 45 year hiatus between his first album’s release and the #1 album spot on Billboard’s chart. Only Tony Bennet (54 years) endured a longer span between milestones. The five-time Grammy Award winning Bostonian has enjoyed a long, storied musical career playing with the likes of Carole King and Carly Simon.
His widely known Carole King remake, “You’ve Got A Friend,” reached #1 in 1971 just a year after his debut single, “Fire and Rain,” reached #3. During his early years, his heroin use contributed to his single, “Rainy Day Man,” which reminds many of The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black” due to its similar storyline; his drug use diminished in the early 1970s amid a career revival and marriage. Many of his early songs never charted high, although each told a powerful story of his struggles in psychiatric institutions and losses of dear friends. At 67 years old, Rolling Stone still categorizes his style of songwriting as “archetypal” and “true to a style reminiscent of the 70s.”
James Taylor’s many accolades include three Best Male Pop Vocal Performance Awards, Best Pop Album, and Best Country Collaboration With Vocals, but his 2000 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame showed how one can turn a musical career filled with drug use into a rewarding songwriting lifestyle that influenced a generation. In 2014, he received an Emmy Award for his performance with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
While many older generations truly understand James Taylor and his musical style, it’s the younger generation of music fanatics that helped vault Taylor into the #1 spot. With a release date happening in June, the world can spend the summer enjoying the new-old sounds of a true music icon. While the world remembers his previous sixteen studio albums, it’s his seventeenth that resonates the most for it’s much deserved #1 Album award.
For the moment, it’s an achievement that Taylor Swift won’t mind praising; for James Taylor, all he can tell his fans is “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You).”
[Photo by Cindy Ord / Getty Images Entertainment]
