March 23: The GOAT - Play your favorite Greatest Hits album - or a compilation from a single artist.
This, along with the GH of Queen/Eagles/Elton, is almost certainly my most played GH album. James Taylor is one of those artists who, much like a ton of 60s and 70s musicians, has his major singles spread over a stupidly large range of albums. As a teen with a limited budget pre-streaming (this was CD and MP3 times), that made discovering classic artists a little tougher when the radio wasn't playing them a ton. I think I found this CD at a Best Buy and took a shot. It immediately became my go-to in my junior and senior years of high school. It's definitely more of a sentimental feel but there's definitely some things I really like about it compared to other GH compilations. It actually feels like an album with the track order and selection, it's short enough to be listened to without dedicating a ton of time, and the song selection is pretty much on point for that portion of this career. Even some of the oddities are just right to cut it from being too similar to each other. Was happy to grab this one for a few bucks off a used rack and have it play well.
Track 1A - Dark Spring. We have had a chillier start to spring than normal, which is nice as I'm in no rush for the 90s temps of the summer. Had to relocate the kids' b-day party from the beach though!
I used to listen to a much larger percentage of Classic Rock as a teen before I started expanding my musical taste/knowledge. No joke, I wasn't thinking about how fitting the first track was for this day until after it started playing. Funny coincidence.