What the hell, Cyndi Lauper started out in a Janis Joplin “tribute” band, and nobody ever dumped on her for abandoning her roots in order to make cheez-whiz synthe-pop while dressing like a thrift store dumpster-diver. She was treated like a Significant Artist for a year or two, until it became obvious that she wasn’t. Sheryl Crow may yet go down in history as a Significant Artist, but I’d hate to hear someday that she’d OD’d on pills (which would be a career move in precisely that direction). All I know is what I read in Spin but I got the impression she’s such a manic-depressive that it could happen. If it did I’d be nearly as depressed as she supposedly is, for a week or two anyway. In truth I have been known to joke about just such a scenario, but only at the expense of the “classic rock” station here--that’s what it would take for them to add her to the playlist. (“All she wanted to do was have some fun...but those a.m. beer buzzes caught up with her in the end...she died so that we might rock...” [cue up “If It Makes You Happy”])

It took forever for the powers that be to send an alternative station our way. Even afterward, Sheryl’s status remained tenuous. They’d play bytes from their voice-mail--one girl: “...and, like, I can’t understand why you play Sheryl Crow when she’s, like, the #1 sleaze,” and most likely that caller was dateless on a Friday night, grooving to her Hole CDs and utterly impervious to the multiple ironies. Such phenomena are usually interrelated.

When an artist is so deeply rejected for such makeshift reasons you want to look to the deeper causes, but I’ve failed to comprehend what they might be. It’s not that she lacks talent. Many of her detractors are neither singers nor songwriters nor musicians. I’ve been a keyboardist for 30 years and find her playing to be...not visionary, perhaps (few keyboardists are, these days) but perfectly adequate for all she wants to do.

Her songwriting? Dig: it pains me to say this, because I dislike more hits and hitmakers than anyone I know. I’ll say it anyway: an artist who scores three or four verifiable hit singles off of even one album (much less two in a row) knows how to write songs, like ’em or not. It’d never even occur to me to attack Michael Jackson as a songwriter, because he’s done that and you haven’t and I haven’t. You can get one or two hits without talent, but not half a dozen...this is bone-dry obvious. Isn’t it? Even Duran Fucking Duran deserve respect on that level. Maybe even Hootie. I retch to say that, but say it I must. This has nothing to do with the phenomenon whereby once certain artists have had a dozen or so hits they let their hair down and release crap that would otherwise been rejected at the demo stage. They can get hits on the strength of the brand name, but not until their fourth or fifth album. (This does not apply to people who rely on outside writers because they can’t even do that for themselves. On them, open season, all year long.)

As a human being? Yeah, she gets on my nerves too. I can safely assume I’d get on hers, just like I do on yours. I suppose in a one-on-one setting she pulls more than her share of manipulative bullshit--I’ve seen more than one interview when she trotted out the “oh I’m so depressed and neurotic and nothing ever makes me happy and even my shrink doesn’t love me anymore” and one can hardly blame the shrink, except perhaps for doing such a lousy job. (“There’s a new thing out, Sheryl, they call it Prozac. Or was it Lithium? Oh what the hell, I’ll write a script for each; take two and call me in the morning.”) A friend (who often gets involved with just such women, for reasons that won’t bear scrutiny) pointed out the lyrics to “Strong Enough” to rest his case, and I must admit that if I heard pillow talk like that I’d start discreetly looking for my socks too...Never let it be said I’m not objective. *gryn*

I’ve heard she can be a sleaze in her personal life, when she wants to. *yawn* Who among any of these people isn’t? Nobody’s particularly good at being sleazy anymore, because we’re so postmodern now as to be beyond guilt as we knew it... but name me a popstar under 40 whom you’d care to have babysitting your kids. Other than Barney.

I don’t know. I just don’t get it. It’s peer-pressure perhaps; a way of indulging a nostalgia for a brand of hipness that doesn’t exist any longer--we feel the need to get cliqueish about anything overly popular because “alternative” hasn’t been really alternative for years, and that sentiment has been a cliché for years as well. It’s getting to where heavy metal and disco are the real alternative--the 70s all over again! I never thought I’d be nostalgic for them either, until I lived through the 80s. There’s a 70s-retro thing to Sheryl’s music, and I’ve usually found it pleasant enough. “All I Wanna Do” (which I can still listen to, even if she can’t stand it) always sounded like a great lost Steelers Wheel outtake to me, “Leaving Las Vegas” was a cop from “The Joker” by Steve Miller, “If It Makes You Happy” growls along like Tom Petty if not the venerable Stones themselves--except that my heart nearly stopped the first time I heard her make that octave leap to the chorus. (And the last time an octave leap made my heart stop was David Bowie’s in the middle of “Heroes.”)

That very moment (and that sullenly hypnotic photo on the CD cover) served notice: she’s no fluke. Sheryl Crow (barring OD or plane crash) will be around for awhile. She knows exactly what the hell she’s doing, does it well, and there’s nothing inherently evil, condescending, stooopid, oppressive, nor ineffectual about it; what the hell more do you want? I’m looking forward to...well, the next 3 or 4 Sheryl Crow albums, anyway. I won’t necessarily be buying them, but the sooner her Greatest Hits, Vol. I hits the racks, the better.

A friend brought up Sheryl Crow, the deleted? unreleased? “dance” album. More power to her, I said. She had it withdrawn, which is a mercy because there’s one less of those in the world. I can’t help being curious about the thing though...what might it have been? And why did she title her 2nd “real” album Sheryl Crow as well? To confuse the hell out of everybody? To make even more dead certain the disco album would never be released behind her back? (Ah, but that’s what boxed sets are for!) As if her discography wasn't complicated enough already. I’m not sure, but I think I might once have seen a copy of it in the store. Did I? She has so many damn EPs out, who would know? Still I should kick myself for not buying it, if that’s what it was, as it’s probably worth bucks now.

Even better, and more importantly--she somehow summoned the wherewithal to lead her record company around by the nose. The Flaming Lips have left her in the dust, having had virtually no hits and yet getting Zaireeka into the stores unmolested. But they have a career to their credit, while all she had was a pile of demos. (If she has a Zaireeka in her back pocket, then it’s high time she pulled it out.) The label wanted to package her as a dance diva and she managed to slip the noose, do what she wanted to do, and put out a monster that yielded a stream of hit singles. She had the smarts to know better than to release a debut album that would be an artistic dead-end in a bankrupt genre. Would you wanna be the next Paula Abdul? Her label wanted that, and she knew better. It’s about as zingy an idea as being the next Beach Boys, but the guys in the power ties, as usual, were the last to know. The next new artist/thoughtcriminal who wants to buck the corporate straightjacket has Sheryl Crow to point to. She’s rendered a service.

It’s not very often I like something that millions of other people do. Acid-washed jeans is the last instance I can recall, and that was ten years ago. And isn’t that an embarrassing admission? Oh, and The Simpsons and King of the Hill. (Daria too, but it’s inherently cultish. MTV Nation turns its lonely eyes to her.) And South Park I’d love if the goddam cable company would kindly allow me to view it. Pretty scary when all your favorite shows are cartoons, isn’t it? Anyway, that’s TV, and I don’t care about TV. Just music. And it’s nice, once in awhile, to be able to turn on the radio, hear something known to be wildly popular, and feel that--just for once--you have something in common with all those millions of people whose lack of taste in most things at most times has been such a ginsu in the heart all these years. Just once, run baby run, and groove and tap the foot and smile and not have to overintellectualize anything--it’s all good. Don’t worry, be populist. Just let it be.