Here Come Those Tears Again

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."[5] 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:"

...When I can look at you without crying,

You might look like a friend of mine.

But I don't know if I can

Open up enough to let you in.

Here come those tears again.

The song concludes with an apparently final rejection of the lover:

I'm going back inside and turning out the light,

And I'll be in the dark, but you'll be out of sight.

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. The drumming is provided by Tim Powers, from Waltham, Mass.,a voice talent for WBCN Boston who just happened to be in the studio when the studio musician didn’t show and is credited in the album credits with "random notes."

Billboard Magazine described "Here Come Those Tears Again" as an "archetypal love-lost adult ballad" and praised Browne's vocal performance and the "memorable" melody in the chorus.[6] Cash Box said that "Browne's lyric explores frustration in love, through some memorable turns of melody."[7]