Sheryl

[Bastet]

This came out in spring of 2002, but I just watched it last night.

I really like Sheryl Crow's music (I hate "All I Wanna Do", but love every other note of Tuesday Night Music Club and find it one of the best debut albums ever) but I knew nothing about her as a person.  I came out of this admiring her.  She faced a lot of shit, but stuck to her guns and controlled her own career.

Michael Jackson's manager, Frank DiLeo, subjected her to so much sexual harassment and threats that she'd never have a career if she kept rejecting him that she sought counsel from a high-powered industry lawyer, who told her to stick it out, and lots of people would kill to be in her position.  The anger of "What I Can Do For You" comes from that.  DiLeo threatened to sue over that song, her manager told him to go ahead, and she never heard from him again.

She got nervous when Letterman called her over to chat after she performed "Leaving Las Vegas" on his show, so when he asked if the song was autobiographical and she started to explain sort of, she got distracted by his joking questions and couldn't center herself to tell the story of collaboration.  So some of the Tuesday Night Music Club guys got pissed, and then when the author of the book by that title (the book having inspired one of the TNMC guys, but she didn't even know that) killed himself several weeks later, that TNMC guy publicly blamed her!

Wal-Mart told her they wouldn't sell her second album because of a song that called them out for selling guns, but said they would if she changed it to K-Mart.  She called them hypocrites and refused.

And when she saw Jimmy Iovine (who'd taken over the label) was busy on his Blackberry under the table while "listening" to "Soak Up the Sun", she texted him to "put that damn thing down" -- and he did.

She started suffering depression during C'mon C'mon, which is what the lyrics of "The Weather Channel Song" come from, but she was in such a dark hole she doesn't even remember writing and recording that song.  She wound up needing inpatient treatment, asking her manager to get her help after she realized if she had the energy to run across the loft and throw herself out the window she'd do it.

When she was going through radiation for breast cancer, and the paparazzi kept trying to get pictures of her looking sick, she wondered "What the fuck has happened to my life?"

I love, love, love when they cut from footage of Lance Armstrong (who'd been her fiancé) denying the doping allegations to her singing "Lie to me" (from "Strong Enough"). 

It's clear how much she loves music, and I liked hearing about all the artists who inspired her, and that she wound up getting to know some of them.  Emmylou Harris, Keith Richards, and Joe Walsh all appear and speak highly of her as an artist and a person.  Brandi Carlile is also interviewed, giving her mad respect and relating that seeing her perform at Lilith Fair is what made her believe she could do it, too.

She recounts that half an hour before her set at Bonnaroo, there was hardly anyone in front of the stage, and she thought, "Okay, that's what I was afraid of - I'm too old for this audience."  But when she took the stage, the place was packed, and when all these folks who were younger than the song started singing along with "If It Makes You Happy" she and her band members just kept looking at each other in amazement.

She credits the "tribe of women" who see her through life, and I dig that.  I also like that she adopted, not bought, her dog, and had him with her everywhere other than on overseas gigs for 13 years.