To me, his songs have always seemed more genuine and heartfelt than someone like James Taylor (who ranks #307). And under the surface, Croce's songs are unbelievably accomplished in terms of musicianship (ie. technical proficiency) and songcraft (for example, combining D minor-key verses with D major-key choruses in the same song, with captivating melodies to boot), but the genius is that they appear to be extremely simple.
I dunno, I suppose he never released what could be considered a classic album, but he wrote more than enough great songs to at least warrant an artist ranking on this site, imo. Why is he so under-appreciated?
I've wondered, even though I like him, whether he suffers from the fact that two of his 3 most well-known songs sound VERY similar musically. ("Bad Bad Leroy Brown" and "You Don't Mess Around with Jim") Not to mention that thematically they're pretty close.
Croce did do some really great tunes though that would probably fall in my mental Top 1000 songs. I'm thinking here of "Time in a Bottle" and "Lover's Cross".
why because he's a male songwriter that actually writes catchy songs? There's maybe a handful of American male songwriters that have never been in a major band(and are going solo)or that don't have a backing band (ie the E Streets, the Heartbreakers) that I actually like. Especially the acclaimed ones. "He can't sing his way out of karioke night at the local coffee shop or write a decent melody but he's lofi or has just an accoustic guitar or writes about his struggles growing up in the Inland Empire so bless his heart lets put him in our year end list. The college kids seem to love him and they're never wrong." I guess that explains Dane Cook ;-)
