The Pretender by Jackson Browne

The Pretender, Jackson Browne's fourth album, arrived on Asylum in 1976 with Jon Landau producing. Browne had first made his name as a teenager in Los Angeles writing songs for other people, and by now each of his own records was outdoing the last: Late for the Sky had topped out at number 14 on the Billboard album chart, and this one climbed all the way to number 5.

Two singles carried it, the title track and "Here Come Those Tears Again", and it's the title song that has stuck, a slow-rolling rocker with the band swelling up behind Browne's plain, unhurried voice. Running on Empty followed a year later and became his signature work, but The Pretender is where the Los Angeles songwriter stopped sounding like a sensitive secret and started filling up the room.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.