(Credits: Far Out / Magnolia Pictures / HBO Documentary Films)
Wed 28 January 2026 8:45, UK
Most artists will resist comparison to their peers and predecessors. They wince when critics or fans assign them “For fans of” tags, witnessing their art being reduced to a derivative of another’s. Even when it’s a musician you admire, it can cause feelings of discomfort or pressure.
If it’s a musician you despise, it might even cause you to question your artistry in its entirety, as was once the case with Jeff Buckley.
There are a lot of reasons an artist can feel uncomfortable with comparisons. They might not feel like they have earned their stripes to be compared to a great; they might feel that their expression is so singular, so unique to them, that to compare it to anything is reductive. It could be a collaboration between these things or simply a disgust at the human desire to categorise art. Whatever it is, most musicians will avoid comparisons like the plague. Buckley was no different.
To create his sparkling, singular sound, Buckley pulled from a wide range of influences. One of his biggest inspirations was Led Zeppelin, whose unique take on rock bled into his style, but you could also find the influence of Nina Simone’s powerful vocals, of poetic lyricists like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, and of his contemporaries like Cocteau Twins.
The result was a striking sound that was definitively Buckley’s. With his glittering guitars, his grand soundscapes, and his emotional yet strong vocals, he became almost immune to comparison, but not quite. When the songwriter was recording his debut album, Grace, in the early 1990s, he received a comparison by a critic that he found to be particularly offensive.
The wondrous Jeff Buckley. (Credits: Far Out / Roy Tee)
A Newsday reviewer likened Buckley’s voice to ‘How Am I Supposed to Live Without You’ singer Michael Bolton, in a comparison that he would not take kindly to. According to Grace producer Andy Wallace, it “stopped him cold”. The new darling of alt-rock vocals had been put alongside perhaps one of the soggiest singers on the airwaves.
He explained, “If someone had thought, ‘Who can I use to really get his goat?’ You couldn’t have chosen somebody better than Michael Bolton.” The pick was enough to send Buckley into despair, as he had to come to terms with the mainstream desire to compare him to such a turgid pop figure in order to understand him.
It’s easy to understand why this comparison got under Buckley’s skin. Though they both had powerful delivery that gave voice to intensely emotional truths, the likeness between them mostly stopped there. Bolton was making radio-friendly pop-rock, borrowing from soul to concoct palatable love songs with little regard for poeticism.
“Nothing heals a heart like time, love and tenderness,” Bolton sings on the titular song from his 1993 album. It’s not necessarily bad, but it’s fairly uninspired. His ballads were commercially friendly, sure, but they weren’t exactly original. To be compared to an artist who was already compared to so many other artists clearly hurt Buckley, and he took a brash action in response.
After reading the comparison of his work to Bolton’s, Buckley halted work on his album for two days. Fortunately, the crisis didn’t extend beyond that, and Buckley got back to work on making an album that would blow every offering from Bolton out of the water. Shrugging off the contempt he felt for the comment, he carved out one of the greatest debuts of all time in Grace.
Between the shimmering strums of ‘Last Goodbye’ and the desperate longing of ‘Lover, You Should’ve Come Over’, between the gorgeous imagery of ‘Lilac Wine’ and a now-iconic cover of Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, Buckley proved that he was a completely different artist to Bolton. Even as he took influence from Led Zeppelin and covered Cohen, he resisted the criticisms Bolton had been subjected to through his singular vision, his truly original artistry.
Three decades on, Grace still remains one of the greatest albums of all time, attracting the admiration of everyone from David Bowie to Buckley’s hero, Jimmy Page. A collection of real emotion, of Buckley’s truly beautiful voice, of his shimmering guitars and varied influences, it sits on an entirely different level to Bolton’s work.
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