Country Road

About Country Road

"Country Road" is a song written and performed by James Taylor. It appears on his 1970 second album, Sweet Baby James. The song was inspired by Somerset Street in Belmont, Massachusetts, a wooded road running adjacent to the land owned by McLean Hospital, where Taylor had committed himself in 1965 to receive treatment for depression. "Country Road" reached number 37 on the Billboard pop singles chart and number 9 Easy Listening in early 1971. On the Canadian charts, the song was a bigger hit on both the Pop (#19) and Adult Contemporary (#3) charts. "Country Road" is also featured on James Taylor's 1976 Greatest Hits record. The song has been played at most of his concerts since 1970. Randy Meisner, later of The Eagles, played bass on the album version. According to Taylor's friend Danny Kortchmar, "Country Road" captures the restless, anticipatory, vaguely hopeful feeling that plays a large part on James' character and appears in "Carolina in My Mind," "Blossom" and "Sweet Baby James." The road leads away from his ensnaring family: "Mama don't understand it/She wants to know where I've been/I'd have to be some kind of natural-born fool to want to pass that way again." It also takes him away from shattered affairs, prep schools, mental institutions — all manner of traps and bummers. At the end of the road lie freedom and ideal life in Carolina, and "a heavenly band of angels." more »