By Dave Read, July 4, 2025 performance – Like 48% of teenagers during the 1960s, James Taylor used a guitar as the sword and shield that would convey him from troubled adolescence into assured adulthood. Almost magically, his turned into a ticket to ride the Fab Four Express to unimaginable highs, and foreseeable lows.
Tonight’s show marks 51 years since he made his Tanglewood debut, which came six years after The Beatles made him the first American to carry their brand into the pop music marketplace. The Apple LP James Taylor was a critical success but a marketplace flop because he wasn’t able to tour widely in support of it, needing instead to retreat in support of himself.
During the first fifty years, the most memorable audience reaction always followed mention of Stockbridge and the Berkshires in Sweet Baby James. Tonight however, the audience’s delight in the local namechecks sounded like a whisper compared to the roar of hatred that erupted when Taylor said “no kings” after saying that You’ve Got a Friend was written for him by Carole King. It was a frightening eruption of mass hatred, an example of how mobs behave.
It was a display of the same energy that powered Jan. 6, which means that it is precisely the opposite of the Common Sense that powered the American Revolution 249 years ago. Pop music isn’t meant to power politics or do anything besides allow people momentary retreat from an increasingly troubled world.
But maybe things are upside down now in America. Maybe the populism Trump incubated for fifteen years in the popular medium of TV, then rode populism’s rude mob into the White House, twice, means that only anti-Trump pop idols have meaningful political power today. It has been a frighteningly long time since anybody has wielded a popular pen in pursuit of honest political purpose.
And tonight, our rare pop idol hinted that his own swan song is imminent. Would that he put that power to good use; it must shock him every time he says “no kings.” Our founders left unharmed their royal nemesis, but they took care to defeat his armed forces. The only takeaway from this concert is that the people are starved for leadership. Pop stars can lead their mobs of fans to troughs of reason, but can they make them reasonable?