Photo: Paul Keleher / CC BY 2.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
James Taylor occupies a rare place in my listening life: he is the artist I reach for when everything else feels too loud. Fire and Rain is one of the most honest songs ever written about grief and survival, and his reading of Carole King's You've Got a Friend shows how a great interpreter can co-own a song. What strikes me is the durability — half a century of essentially whispering to audiences, yet he collected a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction without ever chasing trends. That quiet consistency, I think, is its own kind of radicalism in popular music.
Overview
James Vernon Taylor (born March 12, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. Taylor achieved his breakthrough in 1970 with the No. 3 single "Fire and Rain" and had his first No. 1 hit in 1971 with his recording of "You've Got a Friend", written by Carole King in the same year.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- James Taylor
- Name (Japanese)
- ジェームス・テイラー
- Reading
- じぇーむす・ていらー
- Born
- March 12, 1948 (age 78)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Pisces / Rat
- Origin
- Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- singer-songwriter / writer / guitarist / recording artist / singer
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Chapel Hill High School
- University
- Private
Awards & achievements
- National Medal of Arts
- 2006 MusiCares Person of the Year
- 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom
- 2016 Kennedy Center Honors
- 1998 North Carolina Award for Fine Arts
- 2000 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Singer-songwriter — see all → · Writer — see all → · More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-11
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.