Here Come Those Tears Again

"Here Come Those Tears Again" is a song co-written and performed by American singer-songwriter Jackson Browne and included on his 1976 album "The Pretender". Released as a single, it reached #23 one year to the week after the death of Browne's wife, Phyllis Major, spending nine weeks on the chart, after entering the Billboard Hot 100 on February 5, 1977 at position #64, the highest debut of the week. It also reached #15 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. The single was the eighth-highest charting of his Hot 100 career. It was also released as a single in the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan.
History.
The song was credited as being co-written with Nancy Farnsworth, the mother of Browne's wife, model/actor Phyllis Major. Major had died in March 1976 of an overdose, an apparent suicide, during the period of the recording of the album. According to the Internet Movie Database, Major's mother visited with Browne and Phyllis on vacation in Paris following the "Late for the Sky" tour. Farnsworth "asked Jackson to peruse an unfinished song she had written. Jackson liked the lyrics and incorporated them into a song." The lyrics concern a lover who had left because that person "needed to be free" and "had some things to work out alone," and the narrator's reaction to that return, with the lover claiming they had "grown:"
The song concludes with an apparently final rejection of the lover:
John Hall of Orleans plays the guitar solo, although the arrangement is dominated by Billy Payne's piano and Mike Utley's organ, as well as Bonnie Raitt and Rosemary Butler's harmonizing backup vocals. Tim Powers from Waltham, Mass. and a voice talent for WBCN Boston just happened to be in the studio when the song was recorded and was asked to play drums when the studio drummer never appeared for the session. Producer Jon Landau is credited in the album credits with "random notes."
Reception.
"Billboard Magazine" described "Here Come Those Tears Again" as a "archetypal love-lost adult ballad" and praised Browne's vocal performance and the "memorable" melody in the chorus.