FEATURE:
Love Is a Good Thing
Sheryl Crow at Twenty-Five
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I have put together…
quite a few album anniversary features recently, as there are these classics that are worth highlighting. Including records from Primal Scream, Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers, it is a busy time for anniversaries! One album turning twenty-five on 24th September is Sheryl Crow’s eponymous release. Among the artists I followed and loved during the 1990s, Crow was near the very top. I love her music. Her debut, Tuesday Night Music Club of 1993, is one of my favourites. I think that Sheryl Crow is even stronger. It is more rounded and varied than her debut. Noticeably more confident as a singer and songwriter on Sheryl Crow, one can hear the differences. Sheryl Crow was a commercial success, being certified 3× platinum by the RIAA and 3× platinum by the BPI. It is one of these albums where the deeper cuts are as rich and rewarding as the singles. For anyone growing up in the 1990s, we would have heard singles from Sheryl Crow on the radio in 1996/1997. If It Makes You Happy, Everyday Is a Winding Road and A Change Would Do You Good are all-time classics. I also really like the innovation of her videos. She is an artist who put so much into her music. Whilst I have a particular soft spot for her third album, The Globe Sessions (1998), Sheryl Crow is still very dear in my heart. It is hard to believe that it is twenty-five! Such an important soundtrack during my childhood, I know there will be celebration and commemoration of an important album.
Before coming to a couple of reviews for Sheryl Crow, I am leaning on Wikipedia for some background regarding the recording. By all accounts, there was this period of tension following the release and success of Tuesday Night Music Club:
“Sheryl Crow is the follow-up to Sheryl Crow's 1993 album Tuesday Night Music Club, which was written by a group of musicians known as the "Tuesday Music Club". The group existed as a casual collective formed by Crow and musicians Bill Bottrell, David Baerwald, Kevin Gilbert, Brian MacLeod, David Ricketts, and Dan Schwartz. The album was a commercial success and produced several hit singles, including "All I Wanna Do", "Strong Enough", and "Leaving Las Vegas". It was certified 7× Platinum in the United States and 2× Platinum in the United Kingdom. Crow was also awarded Best New Artist, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and Record of the Year at the 37th Annual Grammy Awards.
Tensions between Crow and other members of the group began to arise following Crow's performance of "Leaving Las Vegas" on the Late Show with David Letterman in March 1994. Crow offhandedly agreed with the host when she was asked if the track was autobiographical, even though it was primarily written by Baerwald and based on the book of the same name by his friend John O'Brien. As a result, several members of the Tuesday Music Club group felt betrayed, and O'Brien himself committed suicide three weeks later. Nevertheless, O'Brien's parents insisted that Crow had nothing to do with the tragedy, noting that he "was just mad about it [...] But the problems that drove him toward the end were – you know, that's a long, long bloody trip."
After Tuesday Night Music Club, Crow wanted to prove her authority as a musician. According to her, "My only objective on this record was to get under people's skin, because I was feeling like I had so much shit to hurl at the tape." Work on the new album began at Toad Hall in Pasadena, California, the same studio where Tuesday Night Music Club was recorded, but sessions were then relocated to New Orleans, Louisiana because Crow "was feeling ghosts in that room". Bottrell was designated to produce the record and co-wrote three songs that would appear on the album, but eventually left because he could not sort out his differences with Crow. As a result, Crow took over production duties and wrote most of the songs alone or with only one collaborator. She also played most of the instruments on the album, including bass and guitar work and nearly all the keyboard parts. Most of the album was recorded at Kingsway Studios in New Orleans, although Crow would later return to Los Angeles to complete work at The Sound Factory and Sunset Sound. Audio mastering took place at Gateway Mastering Studios in Portland, Maine”.
There is so much in the way of sound, texture and range through Sheryl Crow. It is such a broad and diverse album when it comes to genres and lyrical themes. Some critics have noted how the final third of the album is the weakest – it starts amazingly strong but loses momentum towards the end. I think Sheryl Crow is sequenced superbly. It is not the case of the singles all at the top. A Change Would Do You Good is track two; If It Makes You Happy is five; Everyday Is a Winding Road is eight. You get this nice distribution of the big songs alongside the rest of the album.
I feel there has been a lot of retrospective acclaim and respect for Sherly Crow. Maybe, in 1996, it was not seen as overly-hip or relevant. Having proven herself as a promising artist on Tuesday Night Music Club, Sheryl Crow is Crow as this accomplished and mature songwriter who delivered some of the best tracks of the decade. This is what AllMusic had to say in their review:
“Hiring noted roots experimentalists Tchad Blake and Mitchell Froom as engineer and consultant, respectively, Sheryl Crow took a cue from their Latin Playboys project for her second album -- she kept her roots rock foundation and added all sorts of noises, weird instruments, percussion loops, and off-balance production to give Sheryl Crow a distinctly modern flavor. And, even with the Stonesy grind of "Sweet Rosalyn" or hippie spirits of "Love Is a Good Thing," it is an album that couldn't have been made any other time than the '90s. As strange as it may sound, Sheryl Crow is a postmodern masterpiece of sorts -- albeit a mainstream, post-alternative, postmodern masterpiece. It may not be as hip or innovative as, say, the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique, but it is as self-referential, pop culture obsessed, and musically eclectic. Throughout the record, Crow spins out wild, nearly incomprehensible stream-of-consciousness lyrics, dropping celebrity names and products every chance she gets ("drinking Falstaff beer/Mercedes Ruehl and a rented Leer"). Often, these litanies don't necessarily add up to anything specific, but they're a perfect match for the mess of rock, blues, alt-rock, country, folk, and lite hip-hop loops that dominate the record. At her core, she remains a traditionalist -- the songcraft behind the infectious "Change Would Do You Good," the bubbly "Everyday Is a Winding Road," and the weary "If It Makes You Happy" helped get the singles on the radio -- but the production and lyrics are often at odds with those instincts, creating for a fascinating and compelling (and occasionally humorous) listen and one of the most individual albums of its era”.
I will finish off soon. I was keen to mark twenty-five years of Sheryl Crow, as I believe it is one of these albums that is underrated. Maybe it will take a few years more before those who are unsure about it to come on board. The other review that I want to source is Entertainment Weekly. This is a review from 1996. It captures the feelings that many felt about Crow when her eponymous album was unveiled:
“On her new album, Sheryl Crow, she continues the Clinton connection: She yearns to be all things to all people. In hard-luck stories like ”Sweet Rosalyn” and ”Oh Marie,” Crow’s an empathetic chronicler of the underbelly of American life — call her Tom Waitress. On ”Home,” a tenderhearted ballad that has the hushed intimacy of a phone call between lovers, she’s the lovelorn folkie. On funky boppers like ”A Change” and ”Superstar,” she’s a boho hipster, singing out of the side of her mouth and ready for a night with the guys at the town’s tawdriest pool hall. And in ”Love Is a Good Thing” and ”Redemption Day,” she’s a finger-pointing moralist, warning us against corrupt politicians and riots in the streets, and touting the ”train that’s heading straight to heaven’s gate.” Moralism, in fact, links many of these songs. From the strung-out has-beens in ”A Change” to the morning-after doubts in ”Home,” Crow suggests that any and all good times will be followed by personal or political payback. (Indeed, the heretofore untarnished pop star has taken a blow from retail giant Wal-Mart, which refuses to carry the new album because ”Love Is a Good Thing” contains the lyric ”Watch our children while they kill each other/With a gun they bought at Wal-Mart discount stores.”).
In more self-righteous hands, the results could have been insufferable. Yet Crow, who produced the album herself, and her half dozen co-songwriters (including Tuesday Night Music Club collaborator Bill Bottrell) never forget they’re making pop music, and they’ve concocted a loose, freewheeling yet remarkably robust album that tugs at your heart and feet — sometimes within the same tune. The songs chug along, often kick-started by slinky wah-wah guitars, scrappy, bump-in-the-night percussion, and pedal steel guitars that sound even more lonesome than they do in country music. If there’s such a thing as a professional lo-fi album, Sheryl Crow is it.
Singing more assuredly (and often louder) than on Tuesday Night Music Club, Crow invests clever lyrics like ”I thought you were singing your heart out to me/Your lips were synching and now I see” or ”Well, okay, I still get stoned/I’m not the kind of girl you’d take home” — yes, she has more than inhaled — with the knowingness of a reformed bad girl. Her bandwagon streak rears its curly head in ”Maybe Angels,” a cryptic ode to UFOs and government conspiracies that plays like an X-Files theme song. But she’s also shrewd enough to tuck the album’s two weakest tracks at the very end.
If Crow has a shortcoming, it’s her elusiveness. For all her craft, there’s still something undefined about her; she’s a confessional singer-songwriter who tends to hide behind her characters. Again, this might be a sign of the times. Crow’s soul-searching predecessors attracted fans eager to gobble up their every unguarded feeling. But in these more cynical days, that may no longer be the case — witness the backlash against neophyte Lisa Loeb in the wake of her heart-on-both-sleeves hit ”Stay.” Crow doesn’t expose that much of herself on Sheryl Crow — she’s an emotional centrist. But at the very least, she’s building a bridge to a lasting career. A-“.
There is no doubting the credentials of Sheryl Crow and the fact that it has polled high when it comes to the best albums ever (As Wikipedia outline: “In 1999, Rolling Stone selected Sheryl Crow as one of the essential albums of the decade. In 2002, the magazine also ranked it at number 44 in its list of Women in Rock: The 50 Essential Albums. In 2003, the album was featured in the Vital Pop: 50 Essential Pop Albums list by Slant Magazine. In 2008, Entertainment Weekly magazine placed the album at number 39 in their list of Top 100 Best Albums of the past 25 years. In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Sheryl Crow at number 475 in its list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time). A happy twenty-fifth anniversary to an album from…
AN iconic songwriter and artist.