4 Outstanding Jackson Browne Songs That Should Have Been Bigger Hits

You can’t use chart success to properly judge the monumental career of Jackson Browne. That’s not to say that Browne didn’t enjoy his share of hits. It’s just that the uncompromising, profound nature of his work often got lost in the shuffle amongst singles that were easier to digest.

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Nonetheless, it boggles our minds how some of Browne’s best works didn’t do better on the pop charts. We’re thinking about the four sure shots below in particular, none of which even reached the Top 40.

“Fountain Of Sorrow”

You could kind of understand Browne releasing “Walking Slow” as the lead single from his 1974 album Late For The Sky. It’s the only song on the record under four minutes long, and it also features a peppier pace than the other stuff surrounding it. But it’s also the weakest track on a masterpiece of an album. When that song sank, Browne tried to cut down “Fountain Of Sorrow”, a sprawling meditation on the vagaries of love, for single release to follow it up. Even though the edited version loses a lot of the power of the six-minute-plus original, it still carries more potency than singer-songwriter material that did much better on the radio at the time.

“The Pretender”

The Pretender is not a feel-good record by any stretch, even as it continued Browne’s streak of impeccably written and performed LPs. He was struggling in a personal sense, even as his career was surging. And as he looked around, he saw nothing but distorted ideals and squandered promises. All those frustrations came streaming forth in the title track. “The Pretender” finds the narrator so disillusioned that he chooses to settle for less rather than strive for more. Yet there are enough musical hooks to make it all go down. Maybe radio fans would have treated this single better if they knew how prophetic it would be.

“In The Shape Of A Heart”

Jackson Browne’s strongest string of singles, in terms of commercial success, came to a halt when he started delving into more political material. In the good-time 80s, it was hard to get that kind of stuff across to the mainstream, even when it was as potent as what Browne was doing on albums like Lives In The Balance. But Browne did deliver a lovelorn ballad on that record via “In The Shape Of A Heart”. And it’s a doozy, as Browne dives deep into the darker corners of a turbulent relationship to try and make sense of how it all came to that. But not even the turn to a more radio-friendly topic of heartbreak could get the song any traction.

“I’m Alive”

We get it. Expecting Jackson Browne to have a hit single in 1993, when grunge and R&B relegated most singer-songwriters, especially veteran ones, to the background, was probably a pipe dream. That said, it just feels like “I’m Alive” should have received more attention, in much the same way that the album of the same name went somewhat under the radar. The song and album deal in large part with Browne’s fractured romance with actress Daryl Hannah. While many of the songs take him to a somewhat more harrowing place, “I’m Alive” comes out swinging with a buoyant heartland rock groove and finds some measure of positivity.

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