Lives in the Balance: Jackson Browne and the Fight for America’s Soul

For over five decades, Jackson Browne has stood at the intersection of melody and message—crafting songs that speak not only to the heart, but also to the conscience. In an age of division and disinformation, his music feels like a lifeline to an older, more grounded sense of American democratic values—truth, empathy, accountability, and moral courage. This episode dives into Browne’s lifelong journey as both a master songwriter and a tireless activist, examining how his music has evolved into a public reckoning with the soul of the nation.

He grew up in Southern California, crossing the "Orange Curtain" from the sleepy bedroom towns of Orange County and making his way into Laurel Canyon, and from his earliest days playing shows at the Troubadour, Browne’s lyrics were already infused with a deep introspection and a search for authenticity. But as the political landscape shifted in the 1980s and beyond, so too did his writing—growing sharper, more explicit, and unapologetically political. With albums like Lives in the Balance and The Naked Ride Home, he began naming names, challenging war, corporate greed, and environmental neglect. Browne wasn’t content to merely reflect the times—he wanted to change them.

This episode traces the arc of his transformation—from a quiet observer to a clarion voice for peace, climate justice, and human rights. We explore his deep friendships with figures like David Crosby and Bonnie Raitt, his influence on the Eagles and the Southern California sound, and his early alliances with causes like MUSE and the anti-nuclear movement. But we also go deeper: into the heartbreak of Phyllis Major’s death, the personal toll of activism, and the spiritual core that drives his pursuit of justice.

Jackson Browne’s legacy is not one of stardom chased or fame inflated. It’s a body of work that demands we pay attention—not just to the world around us, but to the values we claim to stand for. In a moment where America seems to be asking itself who it really is, Jackson Browne has never stopped answering with clarity, humility, and song.

In This Episode

Songs by Jackson Browne, except where noted otherwise

• These Days
• Where I’m From
• These Days (Nico (From Chelsea Girl)
• To Ramona - Bob Dylan
• Doctor My Eyes
• Take It Easy (Jackson Browne/ The Eagles mash-up)
• Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
• For Every Man
• Running on Empty
• Before the Deluge
• Lives in the Balance
• I Am a Patriot
• I’m Alive
• Which Side
• Downhill From Everywhere
• Standing in the Breach

Dig Deeper

To learn more about several of the topics discussed in this episode, I encouirage you to check out these other American Song episode.

Action: Reaction - American Bands and American Society Respond to the English Invasion

Punk - The Shot Heard Round the World

The Singer-Songwriters Part Two: Truth to Power

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Transcript

Jackson Browne

JACKSON BROWNE – AMERICAN SONG PODCAST

PART I: THE MAKING OF A VOICE

HOST (NARRATION):

Before he was a voice for a generation, before the albums and the activism, Jackson Browne was just a kid with a guitar — trying to figure out how to turn the things he felt into something that could be sung out loud.

He was born in 1948, in Heidelberg, West Germany. His father, Clyde Jack Browne, was a U.S. Army serviceman stationed there after the war. But it didn’t take long for the family to return to the United States, and by the time Jackson was three, they were settled in Highland Park — a neighborhood northeast of downtown Los Angeles.

It wasn’t a showbiz household, exactly — but it wasn’t ordinary either. His father was a pianist, his mother a Swedish immigrant with an ear for classical music. The piano was always in the room, and there was always something playing.

Jackson’s older brother, Severin, would later say that their childhood was filled with a kind of low-key artistic permission — “nobody told you to make music,” he said, “but nobody told you not to.”

That mattered.

Because by the time Jackson was 14, he was writing songs, after he was cut from the

football team, and by his senior year, had composed “These Days” and “Shadow Dream Song,”

two hits that would carry him throughout his career. “These Days” has the kind of lyric that sounds like it’s always existed. Melancholy. Composed. Still.  

Growing up in Orange County, Browne frequented open mics at local coffee houses and folk clubs, and picked up  a local reputation as a songwriter. This was 1965. The Beatles had just played the Hollywood Bowl. Dylan had gone electric. And a strange new ecosystem of guitar-slinging poets and draft-age philosophers was beginning to form in the hills above Los Angeles.

In 1966, he briefly joined the nascent Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – just for a little while, before lighting out on his own for New York City, where he got a gig as guitarist for the German singer-songwriter Nico – who, herself had some notoriety for her work with the Velvet Underground. 

Back in LA again by 16, Jackson was already playing gigs at folk clubs along the Sunset Strip, just a few miles from his high school. By the time Jackson was 18, he was playing at the Troubadour – a club we’ve already talked about a few times (check out episodes _____ from earlier this season if you missed it). Dickie Davis, ran the lights at the Troubadour, and remembered the first time he heard Jackson. In an article in Rolling Stone from 1970, he said Browne was, “one of the ten best songwriters around. He’s got songs that’ll make your hair stand on end.” 

Jackson didn’t arrive with the swagger of a scene-maker. He arrived with a notebook. As he explained in the rock zine Cheetah, “I’ve written a few good songs…nothing really heavy yet. Though…I think I’m headed that way…”

He was quiet, methodical, and observant. And he wrote like someone twice his age.

One of his earliest songs — “These Days” —He was just 16 when he wrote it.

“I’ve stopped my rambling / I don’t do too much gambling these days.”

There’s no posturing in those words. No teenager trying to sound cool. Just someone trying to say something that felt true. Something he couldn’t quite explain — except in a song.

The song would eventually become a signature — but not for him, not at first.

In 1967, Nico, the German singer and Velvet Underground collaborator, recorded “These Days” for her solo album Chelsea Girl. Jackson was 18 — and he played guitar on the session.

That version — her voice, his chords — would become legendary. But Jackson didn’t rush to record it himself.

He wasn’t chasing credits. He was still watching. Still listening.

He fell in with a fast-growing orbit of Southern California artists: Glenn Frey, J.D. Souther, David Crosby, and a young Linda Ronstadt, who sang backup on some of his early demos. He’d drive out to Topanga Canyon or up to Laurel Canyon and hang around long enough to share a song, learn a chord, maybe crash on a couch. He wasn’t loud. But he was present.

By 1967, he’d joined the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band — briefly — before heading to New York to work as a staff songwriter for Elektra Records’ publishing arm. There, he honed his craft even more — writing songs for others, revising endlessly, studying structure. He was 19 years old.

It was in New York that he truly started thinking of songwriting as a vocation — something to apprentice to. In an interview in June 2014, Browne explained that he began writing confessional songs because they expressed what he found most valuable in the music he listened to. Even before the singer-songwriter tradition crystallized in L.A., Browne described his attraction folk music through these personal—rather than communal—attributes, describing, “I think the songs have always been very personal to me. At the same, that’s what was happening in the music I listened to, I think. It seemed to me that that’s what people were always [doing].” Browne specifically cited Bob Dylan’s “Ramona” as the type of songwriting he hoped to emulate, explaining that he  was drawn to songs with a level of personal specificity,

If you listen to Bob Dylan’s “Ramona,” this is an incredibly beautiful song to

somebody that is so specific, you know, [quotes] ‘Your cracked country lips to

kiss,’ and the whole discussion of her attitudes of what she was finding in the city.

And I always pictured someone from the civil rights movement because it was

right in that era, and I thought this was a discussion about idealism, but one that

was specific to a particular person. And I thought that was really valuable.

Eventually, he came back west. And when he did, he brought with him a quiet arsenal of songs.

In 1972, after years of writing for others, Jackson Browne released his debut album.

It was self-titled — Jackson Browne — but the cover featured a cracked egg against a desert landscape, with no name at all on the front.

Like the songs inside, it wasn’t obvious. It asked you to look closer.

That album includes “Doctor My Eyes,” “Song for Adam,” “From Silver Lake,” and — finally — “These Days.”

It’s an album about what it means to feel too much, too young. About trying to hold still in a world that keeps changing shape.

Critics noticed. So did other songwriters.

And so did listeners.

They didn’t hear flash or hooks. They heard introspection.

They heard someone wrestling with questions he didn’t pretend to have answers to.

That voice — steady, unhurried, vulnerable — had arrived.

And it wasn’t going anywhere.

PART II: THE ASYLUM YEARS (Expanded)

HOST (NARRATION):

In the early 1970s, Los Angeles wasn’t just a music city — it was a movement. And at the center of that movement was a label: Asylum Records.

Asylum didn’t start as a corporation. It started as an act of belief — in songwriters, in stories, in the idea that music could still mean something without having to shout.

And the man behind it — the one making it all happen — was David Geffen.

Before he was a mogul, Geffen was a hustler. He didn’t play an instrument. He didn’t write songs. But he had a golden ear and a sharper instinct. And in 1970, when he was still in his late 20s, he set out to build a label for the kinds of artists that major record companies didn’t quite know what to do with — artists who wrote slow songs, long songs, thoughtful songs.

He called it Asylum.

The first person Geffen signed to a publishing deal — before the label even existed — was a quiet 19-year-old songwriter from Los Angeles named Jackson Browne.

Geffen first heard about Jackson through the folk circuit. At the time, Jackson had been writing songs in New York for Nina Music, the publishing arm of Elektra Records. But he wasn’t content writing for others — and Geffen knew it. He told friends that Browne had something most young writers didn’t: emotional clarity. “He makes you feel like you already lived the moment he’s singing about,” Geffen said. “Even if you haven’t.”

Jackson moved back to L.A. in 1971. He was living in Echo Park, writing in the mornings, and playing songs for friends late into the night. One of those friends was Glenn Frey, a fellow aspiring songwriter who’d come out from Detroit and moved into the same apartment building — 1020 North Clark Street.

Frey lived in the basement. Jackson was upstairs. Every morning, Frey could hear the same ritual: Browne boiling water for tea, sitting at the piano, and playing the same intro over and over again — revising, refining, shaving notes until it felt just right.

The song was “Take It Easy.”

“That’s where I learned how to write songs,” Frey later said. “From listening to Jackson through the floorboards.”

Browne never finished the second verse. He gave it to Frey, who took it to his new band — The Eagles — and they made it their debut single. The song hit the Billboard Top 20. And it announced something else: this city, this scene, had its own sound now. Polished, rootsy, sun-streaked, and smart.

But Jackson wasn’t interested in rock-star swagger. He was still writing songs that sat with you.

In 1972, Geffen released his debut: Jackson Browne. It was understated, careful, full of unresolved emotional tension. “These Days,” “Song for Adam,” “Doctor My Eyes.” Critics didn’t always know what to make of it, but the other songwriters knew: this was the real deal.

By then, Jackson was moving in serious circles — not just Frey and Henley, but David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young.

They weren’t just his idols — they were his advocates. Crosby championed Jackson early on. Nash once said, “He writes songs that make me wish I had written them.” And even Young, famously elusive with praise, called Jackson “one of the ones who actually meant it.”

They shared more than stages. They shared a belief — that songs could speak for people, not at them. That music wasn’t escape; it was exposure.

In 1973, Jackson released his second album: For Everyman. It had a slightly bigger sound, but the same emotional core. The title track was his response to “Wooden Ships,” the post-apocalyptic fantasy written by Crosby, Stills, and Paul Kantner. Their version imagined escaping the fallout. Jackson’s version imagined staying behind — to wait for those who couldn’t leave.

It wasn’t a protest song. It was a promise.

But it was his third album — Late for the Sky, released in 1974 — that established him as something more than a promising songwriter.

It was sparse, spacious, and devastating. Songs like “Fountain of Sorrow,” “For a Dancer,” and the title track weren’t just personal. They were existential. He was asking what it meant to live fully, knowing everything eventually ends.

Rolling Stone called it “a masterpiece.” And suddenly, Jackson Browne wasn’t a newcomer anymore. He was a voice.

Around this time, Jackson’s personal life was changing, too. He had fallen in love with Phyllis Major, a strikingly beautiful actress and model who had appeared in TV commercials and walked the runways in Paris. She had an electric presence — magnetic, but fragile.

They had a son, Ethan, in 1973, and got married soon after.

But the relationship was turbulent. Phyllis struggled with depression. The pressures of raising a child, managing a career, and living with a man whose own star was rapidly rising — it all collided.

In March of 1976, Phyllis took her own life. She was 30 years old.

Jackson was on tour at the time. The people around him say Jackson collapsed when he received the call. 

There are no perfect words for what comes next — not from journalists, not from fans, not even from Jackson himself. But the songs tell you everything you need to know.

“Sleep’s Dark and Silent Gate.”

“The Pretender.”

They weren’t written after her death. They were written in it. Right in the middle of the pain. He was trying to make sense of something that had no explanation.

“I want to know who the men in the shadows are…”

“…I want to be a happy idiot and struggle for the legal tender…”

When he sings those lines, he doesn’t sound angry. He doesn’t sound broken. He just sounds... hollowed out. Like someone who’s still showing up for life, even when he doesn’t understand it anymore.

The Pretender was released in November 1976. Critics didn’t know what to call it. Some saw it as a retreat from his earlier passion. Others recognized what it really was — a document of survival.

Robert Christgau called it “as close to perfect as songwriting gets.” Rolling Stone’s Kit Rachlis said, “The Pretender isn't about recovery. It’s about functioning after the fall.”

The album went Gold. It reshaped his image. Jackson Browne wasn’t just the sensitive folkie anymore.

He was someone who had lived through the fire — and come out quiet, but intact.

PART III: RUNNING ON EMPTY AND THE ROAD AHEAD

HOST (NARRATION):

In 1977, Jackson Browne was 28 years old. He had three albums behind him, one tragedy that never left him, and a reputation for writing songs that stood still while the world moved around them.

So what does someone like that do next?

He hits the road.

And this time, he takes the tape machine with him.

Running on Empty isn’t just an album. It’s a document — part travelogue, part confession. Every song was recorded live: backstage, onstage, in hotel rooms, on the tour bus.

No overdubs. No re-dos.

That was the concept.

Jackson wasn’t interested in perfecting performances in the studio anymore. He wanted to capture what it felt like to live this life. The exhaustion, the exhilaration, the emotional blur of one town to the next.

And the result was something radical. It was an album of new songs — written, performed, and recorded on the road.

“The Load-Out,” “You Love the Thunder,” “Love Needs a Heart” — these weren’t about escape.

They were about what happens when you stop pretending that home is waiting for you.

The title track, “Running on Empty,” became a massive hit. It opens the album like a mission statement — pounding piano, sharp rhythm, Browne’s voice straining just a little at the edges. It doesn’t sound exhausted. It sounds relentless.

“I don’t know where I’m running now, I’m just running on…”

You can feel the momentum and the burnout in the same breath.

The album was a revelation. It reached No. 3 on the Billboard charts, stayed there for over a year, and eventually went multi-platinum. For an artist who’d made a career out of restraint, Running on Empty was Jackson Browne’s loudest whisper yet — and people heard it.

Critics loved it. Rolling Stone praised its honesty. The New York Times called it “a travel diary set to music.” It wasn’t just another rock album. It was a field report from the life of a touring artist — tired, isolated, running on autopilot and adrenaline.

Behind the scenes, Jackson was evolving. He wasn’t the same songwriter who crafted delicate fingerpicked portraits of emotional vulnerability in his 20s. He was looking outward now. Watching the news more closely. Reading more deeply.

And he was starting to ask new questions — not just about his own heart, but about the world’s.

He would never stop writing personal songs. But from here on out, the road ahead wouldn’t just be about keeping the tour rolling.

It would be about pulling over.

And looking around.

PART IV: POLITICS, PROTEST, AND PURPOSE

HOST (NARRATION):

By the early 1980s, Jackson Browne had built a career on emotional truth.

But the world was changing — fast. Reagan was in office. The Cold War was heating again. And in Central America, a bloody shadow war was underway — backed quietly by the United States.

Jackson had always kept one eye on the world. But now, he opened both.

It began slowly. A benefit concert here. A radio interview there. 

Around the time of the No Nukes Concert, Browne’s vision of what he could say in a song gained new depth.  The change came from the spirit of skepticism toward the dominant institutions of American society. In an interview, he remembered it like this:

“The thing that we [singer-songwriters] all shared was this widespread distrust of

the American establishment…That was just the ground…a basic fact. So the one

thing that we all had in common was the recognition that things were changing.

And we had a deep sense of being on the right side—being on the side of change,

on the side of upheaval and disruption against an unjust status quo. That was in

my music before I could address any specific political questions. But it was

always there.”

And then came MUSE — Musicians United for Safe Energy — a collective Jackson helped found in 1979 alongside Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash, and John Hall. Their cause: anti-nuclear activism, born out of the near-disaster at Three Mile Island.

They weren’t just playing music. They were organizing. Daisann McLane, in Rolling Stone, wrote that Jackson was, “the guiding force behind MUSE – its spiritual center" Jan Wenner, in an editorial praising MUSE's "Concerts for a Non-Nuclear Future," said Jackson, "… brought in many of the performers through his own preeminence, dedication, and sincerity". In his book, The Politics of Rock Music, John Orman described Jackson as the central figure in activist rock music. 

The No Nukes concerts that year at Madison Square Garden became a rallying cry — not just for clean energy, but for artists taking sides. Jackson performed “Before the Deluge” and “The Crow on the Cradle” — both songs now reinterpreted through a political lens.

He wasn’t interested in telling people what to think. But he was no longer content letting the music speak for itself.

“There comes a point,” he said, “where silence is consent.” 

Man, here in 2025, in the wake of the second Trump election, if those words don’t reach you, you must not be paying attention.

Anyway, by 1985, Jackson joined forces with artists from around the world for Artists United Against Apartheid — a protest against the South African government’s racial segregation, and against American complicity. 

The song “Sun City” — spearheaded by Steven Van Zandt — included everyone from Springsteen to Run-DMC. Jackson didn’t just contribute a verse; he pushed the project forward behind the scenes. You can learn more about this song, and Artists United Against Apartheid when you listen to episode _____ from 2024. There’s a link in the show notes.

He wasn’t chasing hits. He was chasing conscience.

That same year, he was recording a new album — one that would mark a radical departure.

Released in 1986, Lives in the Balance was Jackson’s most overtly political work to date. Gone was the soft-spoken narrator of “Fountain of Sorrow.” In his place was a clear voice of dissent.

“There are lives in the balance / There are people under fire / There are children at the cannons / And there is blood on the wire.”

The album didn’t pull punches. It named names. It questioned the Reagan administration directly. It included pointed critiques of U.S. intervention in Nicaragua and El Salvador, covert funding of right-wing regimes, and a media system that obscured more than it revealed. If you missed episode ____ from earlier this year, go back and have a listen to learn more about the troubles in Central America at the time. Once again, check the show notes for a link.

Songs like “For America” and “Lawless Avenues” didn’t chart high. But they didn’t need to. They were about making it clear: Jackson Browne wasn’t just a chronicler of heartbreak anymore. He was an artist on fire.

The backlash was immediate.

Some longtime fans bristled. Radio programmers passed. Critics were divided. Rolling Stone called it “brave but heavy-handed.” But others — especially young activists — saw it as a turning point.

Jackson later said, “I wasn’t trying to write anthems. I was just trying to say: Look. This is happening. Don’t pretend it’s not.” It was the first time he was seen as divisive.

He toured the record with no apologies. Some venues were half full. Some crowds wanted “Doctor My Eyes.” But Jackson played the new songs anyway. He believed in them. And he understood what that cost – but integrity has a higher value than money. Just don’t ask our President about that; he’ll just point out his new Air Force One, courtesy of Quatar. Some people don’t understand integrity.

But for Jackson, integrity mattered more than unity.

He would return to more personal songwriting later. But the fire never went out.

In the years that followed, he continued to speak out — on climate change, war, racial justice, immigrant rights. Not always with an album. Sometimes just with his presence.

And it’s easy to forget now, but this was before artists could tweet their opinions. Before hashtags and livestreams. Speaking up back then meant risking your place in the room.

Jackson did it anyway. Not to preach. But to participate.

PART V: FALL AND REBIRTH

HOST (NARRATION):

In 1989, Jackson Browne released an album called World in Motion. It didn’t do well.

Critics called it self-serious. Fans didn’t connect. Even Jackson later admitted it lacked balance — more message than music, more urgency than melody.

The songs still had meaning. But something had shifted. He was tired.

The political battles had taken their toll. The personal losses had added up. And the arrow on his artists’s that had once felt so sure was now in free-spin. 

So he went quiet. Not gone. Just quiet.

He spent more time with his son. More time writing privately. He traveled. Reassessed. He didn’t abandon activism — but he let the songs come more slowly.

And when they did, they didn’t shout. Instead, they whispered.

In 1993, after four years of silence, Jackson released I’m Alive. It was a return – not a comeback - album. No more sloganeering or righteous anger. In their place were songs of heartbreak, tenderness, and rediscovery.

The title track — “I’m Alive” — wasn’t triumphant. It was raw.

“It’s been a long time since I watched these lights alone…”

You could hear the ache. But you could also hear the breath.

Jackson’s critics who had soured on him saw the change and the record was critically praised. The Washington Post called it “his finest since The Pretender.” Rolling Stone said he had “rediscovered vulnerability without surrendering strength.”

More importantly, fans came back. Not because Jackson had changed. But because he hadn’t.

The world had circled. The political tides had shifted. But in his artist’s hand, his compass was once again quiet; steadfast. 

What were the events in Jackson’s’ life that returned his music to its foundation

PART VI: THE LONG LOOK BACK

Jackson Browne doesn’t give off the aura of someone chasing legacy.

He’s never written a memoir. Doesn’t do much myth-building. And when people ask him about the past, he usually answers with something like: “That was then. I’m trying to write what’s true now.”

But time has a way of catching up with even the most forward-facing artists.

And when Jackson did eventually look back, he did it the way he always had — with restraint. With clarity. And with just enough sorrow to let you know he’d actually lived it.

In 2002, he released The Naked Ride Home, a collection of songs about longing, distance, memory. It didn’t try to reinvent the wheel. It didn’t have to. These were songs from a man in his 50s now — a father, a witness, a survivor of his own choices.

On the title track, he sings:

“Stripped of hope and faith / Left no illusions / I ride the naked ride home.”

There’s no bitterness in it. Just recognition.

He was still touring. Still writing. But the pace had slowed. Not out of fatigue — out of intention.

He’d seen what rushing leads to. And he wasn’t in a hurry anymore.

The next few albums — Time the Conqueror (2008), Standing in the Breach (2014) — carried that same blend of reflection and quiet urgency.

The lyrics leaned global: climate change, social justice, war. But they also leaned inward. There were songs about loss. About parenting. About friends who were gone and wounds that never quite closed.

Jackson’s voice — never flashy — had deepened. A little gravel. A little drag. But still unmistakably him.

The kind of voice that doesn’t beg for your attention but it deserves it. He’s earned it.

When Jackson Browne was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. Bruce Springsteen was there to welcome him in, the way only Bruce can.  Here’s what Bruce said

Bruce here.

It was one of the few times Jackson seemed visibly moved. Not flattered. Just seen. And that’s always been the goal.

In interviews, Jackson doesn’t talk much about legacy. But when pressed, he says things like:

“I don’t know what people will remember. But I hope the songs helped them feel something they couldn’t name.”

And maybe that’s the truest summation of his work — He’s given his listeners a vocabulary; 

a way to say things they couldn’t say alone. To grieve without melodrama. To hope without denial. To sit with the parts of life that don’t get fixed — to be fully present and fully real.

At this point in an artist’s journey, when you’ve done as much, and lived as much as Jackson has most artists – if they’re doing anything - are doing greatest hits tours. It’s been a long time since Jack McDonough, another of Rolling Stone’s great rock critics called Jackson, "perhaps the most ·important American songwriter since Bob Dylan and as true a voice as we are going to hear”, back in the 70’s. But Jackson isn’t like most artists. He’s still writing new material. Still revisiting old wounds. Still playing songs not because they’re popular — but because they’re still honest. And when people sing along, it’s not out of nostalgia. It’s because the songs still work.

PART VII: STILL HERE. STILL NEEDED.

In 2021, when the rest of the world was going back to work after the pandemic, Jackson was right along there with us, working on the songs that would become his 15th studio album, called Downhill From Everywhere. While the title track was a lament about environmental decay, the album itself was something deeper — a reflection on being alive in a world that won’t slow down, even when we need it to.

It sounds like a man trying to hold space. Not to fix or right things, but just to be present.

And that’s what the closing track is called. “Here.” It’s not a protest song, or a breakup song, or a road song...

And the album was his first full-length work since 2014’s Standing in the Breach. Nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Americana Album in 2022, it also gathered critical praise. Mojo called it: "A masterclass in measured passion and musical subtlety" and Uncut said it was: "Mature, humane, and unshowy — everything Jackson Browne has always done best". The songs reflected on aging, mortality, environmental collapse, and disconnection. Jackson himself was trying to balance urgency and acceptance. He said, “The songs are about living in the world today — this chaotic, beautiful, unjust world — and trying to find clarity and meaning in it.”

The final song on the album is called, “Here”. About it, Jackson says, “I wanted to write something that just said: I’m here. I want to be here. That’s the most radical thing we can do sometimes — to show up.”

“If I could be anywhere,” he sings, “I’d want to be here.”

He’s not looking backward. He’s not chasing a comeback. He’s standing in the breach — not as a savior, but as someone who refuses to disappear. He’s never written a memoir. Doesn’t plan to.

“If I’ve done it right, the songs are the memoir,” he said. “They’re the record of what mattered.”

And what mattered — across five decades — is remarkably consistent. Connection. Truth. Kindness. Urgency. He’s never tried to be a guru. Just a witness.

“I don’t want to tell people what to think,” he said. “I want to create a space where they can think — and feel — for themselves.”

That space — the Jackson Browne songbook — is vast. And tender. And open-ended.

You can hear it in “The Pretender,” where he wrestles with what it means to settle.

You can feel it in “Sky Blue and Black,” where he sings through heartbreak without bitterness.

You can sit with it in “Before the Deluge,” where he wonders if we’ll change — before it’s too late. And in the end, it’s not about answers.

“The songs don’t solve things,” Jackson said. “They sit with things. They keep asking.”

And maybe that’s what makes them so necessary. They don’t rush us to feel better. They help us feel truthfully.

And so we’ve come to the end of another episode my friends.

As always, thanks for checking in.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the message and the music, and most of all I hope it brings you energy to make your corner of our collective backyard a better space. God knows we need it. Until next time round, keep your chin up, keep your eyes on the prize, and keep working for a better tomorrow. Despite what the people holding power want us to think, it’s in our hands to decide what happens next. We can have whatever kind of tomorrow we want to have – all we need is the collective will to make it so.

This is Joe Hines for American Song. See you next time!