James Vernon Taylor is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist, born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Taylor's career began in the mid-1960s, but he found his audience in the early 1970s, singing sensitive and gentle acoustic songs. He was part of a wave of singer-songwriters of the time that also included Joni Mitchell, Tom Rush, Cat Stevens, Carole King, John Denver, Jim Croce, Don McLean, and Jackson Browne, as well as Carly Simon, whom Taylor later married.