JAMES TAYLOR: AMERICAN STANDARD

American Standard, the newest album by James Taylor is a love-letter to song and the songwriters who write them. Like his dear friend and fellow songwriting genius Carole King, JT went to songwriting school - aka as "the college of musical knowledge" - by learning these songs. They were the soundtrack of his parents' lives, and so a big part of his upbringing, same as with Carole, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Paul Simon and so many of that generation raised on these songs as we were raised on their's. The sophistication baked into them - the ingenuity of lyrical linguistics, both poignant and clever, merged with gloriously remarkable timless melodicism of the heart - represents to JT a "highwater mark for this art of songwriting."



1 My Blue Heaven
2 Moon River
3 Teach Me Tonight
4 As Easy As Rolling Off a Log
5 Almost Like Being in Love
6 Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat
7 The Nearness of You
8 You've Got to Be Carefully Taught
9 God Bless the Child
10 Pennies from Heaven
11 My Heart Stood Still
12 Ol' Man River
13 It's Only a Paper Moon
14 The Surrey with the Fringe on Top