The decade in which I was born has given me a strange perspective on its music. I discovered pretty much all of the 70’s sounds – from prog rock to punk to disco – well after they came into the world. It wasn’t until the late 80’s that I discovered what I was missing. I would characterize the decade as one where budding genres leaped off their inspiration pads and came to fruition. For the month of February, Mental Jukebox will feature some of these gems with a different 70’s song each day. #28DaysOf70sSongs
James Taylor’s version of folk has straddled two sides of the emotional spectrum: happy and sad. Songs like “How Sweet It is” and “Your Smiling Face” were uplifting, but more often JT was hanging out on the other end of spectrum as evidenced by signature tracks like “Fire and Rain” and “You’ve Got a Friend”. “Carolina in My Mind” and “Country Road” would’ve been light and airy if they were sung by someone else, but there’s an inescapable sadness in the way Taylor sings those classics. Thankfully, that isn’t the case with “Mexico”. The border town fantasy sounds like a place you want to escape to, not escape from.
This is my favorite JT song of all time. Having harmony masters David Crosby and Graham Nash singing backing vocals certainly didn’t hurt. But it was JT’s acoustic guitar that was the musical highlight and the heartbeat of this song. From the opening sequence to the end refrain, he found a way to create a melodic masterpiece out of these unusual chord progressions—an uncommon achievement for pop music at the time. And the best thing about it, “Mexico” still holds up so well more than four decades later.
“Way down here, you need a reason to move. Feel a fool running your stateside games.”