#
Audio CD
# Original Release Date : September 24, 1996
# Number of Discs: 1
# Label: A&M Records
Basic Track listing
1. Maybe Angels
2. A Change Would Do You Good
3. Home
4. Sweet Rosalyn
5. If It Makes You Happy
6. Redemption Day
7. Hard To Make A Stand
8. Everyday Is A Winding Road
9. Love Is A Good Thing
10. Oh Marie
11. Superstar
12. The Book
13. Ordinary Morning
REVIEWS
All Music Guide
by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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.
Rating: 4.5/5
New York Times
October 6, 1996
By Jon Pareles
THE MILLENNIUM approaches, even in Hollywood, and Sheryl Crow's new songs are a sampler of end-of-the-century hopes and fears. On her second album, ''Sheryl Crow,'' she's thinking about visitations from angels and wondering if she can find some kind of faith. At the same time, she feels as if she's living in a fallen world, corrupt and dangerous, that's a long way from the golden age of 1960's idealism. And as a Los Angeles pop professional, she takes a jaundiced look at stardom.
Crow's first album, ''Tuesday Night Music Club,'' was a committee effort, with two to seven people credited on every song. It was impossible to tell whether Crow was leading her Los Angeles songwriting clique or was merely its mouthpiece. But that was three years and eight million album sales ago. Now, Crow is fully in charge. She produced ''Sheryl Crow'' (A&M) and wrote most of the songs alone or with only one collaborator. Her confidence is unmistakable, even when she sings about anomie. ''I'm just wondering why I feel so all alone/Why I'm a stranger in my own life,'' she sings in ''Every Day Is a Winding Road,'' which turns optimistic despite itself.
True to the tenets of 1990's rock success, Crow doesn't savor triumph openly. She glares from the album photographs, a fashion victim with heavy makeup and streaked hair. But in the songs, she's more divided. Telling other people's stories, she's a wry, guarded observer. Then, using her new-found popularity as a pulpit, she makes declarations like ''I've got a message/ Oh yeah!'' Two of the songs she wrote alone -- ''Home'' and ''Ordinary Morning'' -- are unadorned depictions of breakups, while the third, ''Redemption Day,'' may be her indictment of American policy in Bosnia: ''We waited till so late/Was there no oil to excavate?''
Most of the music is part country, part Rolling Stones, with lunging, swaggering guitar riffs and choruses that leap upward to make themselves indelible: ''If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad/ If it makes you happy, then why are you so sad?''
Crow's musical loyalties are to the 1960's and the early 1970's, with echoes of Bob Dylan, Traffic, Bonnie Raitt and Neil Young. As on her first album, she tries on various voices, including one too many; she's out of her depth as a soul belter in ''Ordinary Morning'' and ''Love Is a Good Thing.'' Yet a recognizable voice comes through the best songs: girlish but with the frayed edge of long-gone innocence.
Crow becomes clumsy when she tries to put across social commentary; her wit disappears behind earnestness, and the music shifts from 1960's homage to direct imitation. ''Hard to Make a Stand'' (''Ruby Tuesday'' meets ''Beast of Burden'') mourns the death of a woman shot on the way to an abortion clinic; ''Love Is a Good Thing'' (recalling Sly and the Family Stone's ''Family Affair'') reflects on violence and fear.
Yet ''Love Is a Good Thing'' has already provoked full-scale opposition: Wal-Mart is refusing to carry this album because Crow sings, ''Watch our children while they kill each other/ With a gun they bought at Wal-Mart.'' (Wal-Mart has said it only sells guns through its catalogue and only to adults.) It's as close as Crow come to being a renegade.
BUT SHE'S BETTER OFF with characters than with lessons. Crow half-sympathizes with the women in ''Sweet Rosalyn'' and ''Oh, Marie,'' whose love lives aren't going right (''She likes lingerie, but he prefers the sombrero''). And in ''Home,'' her breathy voice and a languid pedal steel guitar perfectly capture the inertia of a failing romance.
She repudiates the blandishments of show business in the skeptical ''Change'' and the cautionary ''Superstar,'' which notes, ''It's a shame when you start to fade.'' And in ''Maybe Angels,'' Crow identifies with U.F.O.-watchers, Elvis-spotters and others looking for secular salvation. Her tone is indulgent and savvy, as if she's not sure she'd know better herself. Instead of preaching like a star, she's watching for portents like the rest of us.
Amazon.com
by Sam Sutherland
Skeptics who attributed the success of Sheryl Crow's 1994 debut, Tuesday Night Music Club, to a combination of Crow's seductive good looks and a shrewd choice of collaborators have been effectively silenced by the range and depth of songs and performances on her self-produced, pointedly self-titled sequel. Playing guitars and keyboards, and building a triumphant, layered vocal style, Crow is tough as nails and drolly soulful on the deft "Change," as noteworthy for Crow's crafty lyrics ("Hello, it's me, I'm not at home/ If you'd like to reach me, leave me alone...") as for its solid, midtempo groove. "Maybe Angels," "If It Makes You Happy," and "Everyday Is a Winding Road" are only the most familiar highlights in a varied and absorbing set that argues Crow is no one's invention but her own.
Slant Magazine
by Sal Cinquemani
Sheryl Crow was drunk during the recording of most of her debut Tuesday Night Music Club. The album (the title of which was inspired by the weekly jam sessions that ultimately produced the disc's rootsy, beer-logged songs) was in stark contrast to Crow's pointedly self-titled follow-up. Released in 1996, Sheryl Crow sounded right at home next to other post-grunge, postmodern (and seemingly post-everything) albums like Beck's Odelay and Ani DiFranco's Dilate. The mid-'90s was a sort of wasteland for alternative pop of this kind (the standard was to mix ordinary pop songwriting with samples, hip-hop beats and electronic effects), which produced an endless list of one-hit wonders not unlike the similar synth-driven boom of the '80s. But Crow, like Beck, found that rare balance between retro, organic rock and slick, glam-pop on her sophomore effort.
Crow's voice sounds more assured when she's sober. The critically-hailed singer took full-reign of the production duties, partially in response to suggestions that she was a mere puppet to her all-male Tuesday Night Music Club. As such, there's a palpable, fear-driven ambition to the album. Her drive paid off and not only did Crow avoid the dreaded sophomore slump, but Sheryl Crow is easily her greatest achievement. The album's lead single, the crunchy rocker "If It Makes You Happy," was both a retort to the criticism she received as well as a fatigued reflection on two years of fame and touring (which included a stint at Woodstock '94, specifically referenced here). While the structure of the single is fairly straightforward, other tracks are filled with quirky, stream-of-conscious lyrics (pop culture references abound: to Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, Ouija boards, etc.) and a collage of drum loops, organs and layered voices. Songs like "Ordinary Morning," with its lazy piano figures and raw blues vibe, are cushioned comfortably next to loopy tracks like "Maybe Angels" and understated folk ballads like "Home," in which Crow recounts the emotional strains of a deteriorating marriage.
As always, Crow's lyrics take a decidedly moralistic stance but never sound preachy. "Hard To Make A Stand" touches on abortion clinic terrorism while "Love Is A Good Thing" sees the solution to the world's problems in the same four-letter word so many other rockers have enthusiastically endorsed over the years. Crow makes subtle references to The Beatles' "Love Is All You Need," but not before giving us a dose of modern reality: "Watch our children while they kill each other/With a gun they bought at Walmart discount stores." This is certainly not the same hippie mentality of the '60s and '70s, and one can't help but think that Crow is a tad less confident with her miracle product than, say, Lennon ever was. "These are the days when anything goes," she sings on the buoyant "Everyday Is A Winding Road," and the sentiment speaks for both the song's playful optimism and the album's sonic adventurousness. Crow has had some other great moments ("Leaving Las Vegas," "My Favorite Mistake"), but none of her other full-length albums have been as consistent, immaculately produced or distinctly modern.
Rating: 4.5/5
Entertainment Weekly
September 27, 1996
By David Browne
MIRACLE CROW
ON HER SELF-TITLED NEW ALBUM, SHERYL CROW AIMS FOR THE POPULAR VOTE BY TOUCHING EVERY MUSICAL BASE FROM FOLK TO FUNKY POP. AND SURPRISE, SHE SUCCEEDS.
Every era gets the singer-songwriter it needs and deserves. When '60s counterculture types sought to chill out in the early '70s, there was James Taylor, just as, the following decade, Tracy Chapman served as an outlet for the Reagan-era disgruntlement of righteous liberals. Now, at a time when we want to believe in things even if it makes little sense to do so -- such as a well-intentioned President with some pesky faults -- we have Sheryl Crow, who may well be the Bill Clinton of rock & roll.
The similarities begin with Crow's debut album, Tuesday Night Music Club (1992), which was released the same year Clinton was elected. Much like the President, Crow has tailored her career to fit the times, whether that meant singing backup for Michael Jackson in 1986 or recording routine power-ballad pop (on an unreleased 1992 album). On Tuesday Night Music Club she reinvented herself yet again, as a life-in-the-downsized-lane singer-songwriter -- a more polished, mainstream, and sexy version of mannered sleaze-observer poets like Rickie Lee Jones. This time, the reinvention worked. Despite the suspect makeover, the album was sharp and quirkily produced, with Crow revealing herself as the consummate shuck-and-jive entertainer -- not unlike the man in the White House.
On her new album, SHERYL CROW (A&M), 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.
Rating: A-
Jam! Showbiz
September 29, 1996
By Paul Cantin
http://jam.canoe.ca/
It appears this highly-anticipated album is poised to run up against a bit of a backlash, but before you stone the Crow, give a listen.
If a recent story in a San Francisco newspaper is to be believed, Crow, a former back-up vocalist with Michael Jackson, befriended a group of talented musicians and songwriters (the Tuesday Night Music Club, which later became the title of her debut album), milked them for ideas and inspiration, and then dumped them when fame beckoned.
Well, okay. But that tale of alleged deception can't completely account for this sophomore effort, which is rather pointedly titled Sheryl Crow, as if to proclaim she can stand on her own.
Crow writes or co-writes these 13 songs and produced the record, and if the sly lyrical tone of Tuesday Night Music Club wasn't authentically Crow's (as her collaborators are claiming), then the singer has learned to mimic that tone perfectly on this new record.
The fanciful, wry worldview on (already famous for invoking the fury of Wal-Mart by suggesting the U.S. branch of the retail chain deals in death by selling guns) have the widescreen sweep familiar from her gargantuan hit single, All I Wanna Do.
The standout opening track, Maybe Angels, moves from Pensacola Holy Roller meetings to secret UFO bases in New Mexico, takes a big swipe at tabloid culture and scores a bullseye.
The handclaps, electro-percussion and stabs of organ on A Change, too, harken back to the last album.
But Sheryl Crow is a much funkier affair, with ragged drums, wah-wah pedal and electric piano as key ingredients.
But the main weapon in her arsenal is her voice, which seems to move from a sweet rock 'n roll growl to a ragged, heartrending ballad purr within a single verse. Whatever she did to get this far, it's clear Crow will be here for a while.
Rolling Stone Magazine
October 3, 1996 (pp. 69-71)
By Garner
... While still working with collaborators, she operates more like a leader than a club member this time, writing a few songs independently and imbuing all of them with a greater sense of who she is and where she comes from. The lyrics seem grittier and more intimate ... and the craftsmanship is strong and self-assured.
Rating: 3.5/5
Rolling Stone Magazine
December 2nd, 1996
By David Fricke
Sheryl crow has paid some labor-intensive dues (backup singing, studio work, cutting an entire debut album for A&M that got shit-canned), and even the comely Hollywood-hootenanny fluff of Tuesday Night Music Club had an insouciant charm to it. But based on Sheryl Crow's lite coat of blues-rock grease and the vampish portraits in the CD booklet, Crow wants us to believe that she has toughened into a trailer-park rock & roll jade – and it's a flimsy act. If there is any soul or character development in these songs, Crow throws it away on bald classic-rock theft – "Hard to Make a Stand" is remarkable for its similarity to both the Stones' "Tumbling Dice" and "Sweet Jane," by the Velvet Underground – or underplays it with white-bread VH1 poise. "If It Makes You Happy" is as good as it gets, juicing the feel of Tuesday Night with a little Friday night fire. Otherwise, the Janis Joplin vibe on Sheryl Crow is a bust. Crow has neither the flamboyance nor the nerve to pull it off. (RS 750/751)
Included in Rolling Stone's Essential Recordings of the 90's.
Rolling Stone (05/13/1999)
The Independent
by Nicholas Barber
October 13, 1996
Those who might be lured by the refrain, "All I wanna do is have some fun," should be warned - Crow is now singing a different tune: "If it makes you happy, why the hell are you so sad?" On this eponymous follow-up to her hit debut, Tuesday Night Music Club, the cast of characters is betrayed, bruised and disappointed. The trouble is that the record captures their mood a little too well: the music, produced by Crow herself, could do with more cheer and spontaneity. It opens deceptively with the mechanical clank of a trip-hop beat, but soon settles into the electric piano and scratchy slide guitars of traditional, Dylan-Stonesy country rock. Not a great deal of fun, but there's enough talent and social conscience to make for a consistently strong album.
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