Paul Taylor was born on April 30, 1960 and grew up in Denver. He took up the alto saxophone at seven, played in school bands, and in high school joined a Top 40 cover band called Mixed Company, where he added the soprano. Membership in a Denver all-star city jazz band brought him to the UNLV campus for a visit, and in the fall of 1978 he arrived in Las Vegas on a full music scholarship. He graduated from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and is based in Las Vegas. Around 1989 he was the saxophonist in the touring band of the pop singer Dino (Dean Esposito), another UNLV graduate, who opened shows for New Kids on the Block that summer and who later became Taylor's main producer. He married Laronda Tinsley-Taylor, whom he met at UNLV, in the late 1980s; she is the namesake of the tune "LaRonda" on Prime Time.

The break came in 1994 at the Catalina Island Jazz Festival, where he was working with Esposito. The pianist Keiko Matsui and her husband and producer Kazu Matsui heard him and hired him to play in her band on the spot. He spent two years on the road with her, and Kazu Matsui produced his debut, On the Horn (Countdown Records, 1995), which reached the jazz charts and produced the radio hit "'Til We Meet Again." He kept playing on Keiko Matsui's records, including Dream Walk (1996) and Full Moon and the Shrine (1998), and remained a guest with her studio band into the late 2000s. In the same years he worked with the drummer Akira Jimbo of Casiopea, playing soprano on Jimbo's Flower (1996) and alto and soprano on Stone Butterfly (1997). Pleasure Seeker (1997), his second album, was produced by Esposito and Scot Rammer.

In 1999 he took the saxophone chair in Russ Freeman's band The Rippingtons for Topaz after Jeff Kashiwa left, and he toured with them as a special guest soloist into 2000, before Eric Marienthal took over the role. His third album, Undercover (N-Coded Music with Peak Records, February 22, 2000), credits several producers, among them Maurice White of Earth, Wind & Fire, with Freeman on guitar and in the mix. It reached No. 3 on Billboard's Top Contemporary Jazz Albums chart and spent 28 weeks on the contemporary jazz charts. Freeman had co-founded Peak Records in 1994 with his manager Andi Howard, and Peak released Taylor's next four albums: Hypnotic (2001), Steppin' Out (2003), Nightlife (2005, with Rex Rideout producing) and Ladies' Choice (2007). Howard is credited as Taylor's manager on several of his records between 2000 and 2021.

Ladies' Choice is where the R&B side of his work became explicit. It carried two vocal features, "I Want to Be Loved by You" with LaToya London and "How Did You Know" with Regina Belle, reached No. 1 on the contemporary jazz chart and crossed over to Billboard's R&B albums chart, where it peaked at No. 26. In 2007 he also took an alto saxophone solo on "I Try," a top ten single from Peabo Bryson's Missing You, and AllMusic notes charting collaborations with Maxi Priest. Away from his own records he toured on the Gentlemen of the Night bill with fellow saxophonists Marion Meadows, Michael Lington and Warren Hill, and joined the Groovin' for Grover tribute shows to Grover Washington Jr. alongside Gerald Albright, Richard Elliot and Jeff Lorber.

Burnin' (Peak/Concord, 2009) spent 38 weeks on the smooth jazz charts and also went to No. 1, and its title track topped the airplay chart. Prime Time (2011, E-One) reached No. 3 on the contemporary jazz chart, and "Push to Start" from it topped the Smooth Jazz Songs chart. Tenacity (March 18, 2014) added Lorber and the vocalist Jonathan Fritzen, whose "Supernova" was the lead single, and also peaked at No. 3. On November 7, 2014 he headlined UNLV's Artemus Ham Hall for the first time, 36 years after arriving on campus, shortly after recording again with Jimbo. Jimbo's Groove of Life (Electric Bird, January 2015) has Taylor on alto saxophone on one track and soprano on another. Countdown followed on September 9, 2016.

The pandemic shaped his most recent records. And Now This (Peak, November 5, 2021) was built from digital files traded between Taylor and Esposito, aimed at club tracks and radio singles, with "Ride It" sung by Jamie Jones of All-4-One. A non-album single, "Share It with You," paired him with the Twitch streamer OriginalSnow. It's a Brand New Day (Shanachie, February 2025), co-produced by Esposito and Barry Eastmond, includes "Makin' Moves" and an instrumental reading of Billie Eilish's "Chihiro." As of November 2026 his official website lists dates this month in Texas, at the Cancun Jazz Festival and in Dallas, with shows booked into early 2027.

Taylor is a smooth jazz saxophonist in the radio-and-R&B tradition, and his records are built accordingly: programmed drums, synthesizers, vocoder and guest vocalists, with his alto and soprano carrying the melody. AllMusic describes a reedy, warm and bright tone over danceable grooves and pop writing shot through with electronica, a fair summary of a catalog that runs from the trip-hop textures of Pleasure Seeker through the sparser Undercover to the club-minded And Now This. He told the Baltimore Sun in 2005 that he wanted to play more alto than soprano on Nightlife, and that paper's reviewer heard the influence of Grover Washington Jr. in his soprano playing; Taylor has also taken part in Grover tribute tours.

The jazz link is real but specific: school and city jazz bands in Denver, a music scholarship at UNLV, two years in Keiko Matsui's band, a stretch with The Rippingtons, and tours and sessions alongside Jeff Lorber, Marion Meadows and Gerald Albright. The improvising is short-form and melodic rather than extended, and the writing is tied to the producers he returns to, above all Dino Esposito, Barry Eastmond and Rex Rideout. Critical reception has been warm but qualified. Jonathan Widran of AllMusic gave Undercover four stars, while the Baltimore Sun's Rashod Ollison called Nightlife a solid record but placed it below the genre's classics and found some of its programmed drum sounds dated.