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Saturday, November 12, 2005
Espina: Dear Lance
By Cattski Espina
Til the Cat lady sings
I have followed the music of Sheryl Crow since she exploded to the global music stage in 1993 with her album Tuesday Night Music Club which carried the hit singles All I Wanna Do and Strong Enough. I love her music to the point that my band covered a few of her songs when we started out back in 2000. Her songs are fun to play—the blues-based rock n’ roll rhythm arrangements are challenging to my band mates and her vocals falls just within my range, so it’s easy to sing.
Easily, she’s one of my biggest foreign influences. She is a true American rock star in the league of Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger. In fact, I believe Sheryl is only one step away from Hall of Fame status. And why not? She has about nine Grammy Awards apart from her American Music and MTV Awards, she has top 40 hits in every album she puts out, and the woman still knows how to rock even as she is a bit past the age of 40.
After four albums, she released her most commercial work ever dubbed C’mon C’mon, which exuded feel-good vibes and pop romanticism. The year was 2002, music was dominated by Britney and Cristina and Sheryl struggled to remain relevant. She changed her image and looked more like a diva than a rock star. She even showed some skin in her promo pictures and appeared in a skimpy two-piece swim suit in one of her music videos.
Initially she came out questionable and compromising but, thankfully, when you listened to the music, it remained consistent to what she’s given to the world all these years. Although it was dominantly pop, it still had that bluesy rock n’ roll guitar riffs Sheryl is known for. Ultimately, C’mon C’mon showed that Sheryl still knows how to have fun and the hit singles Soak Up
The Sun and Steve McQueen are proof of that.
Six albums later, Sheryl released the latest addition to her discography. Wildflower came out mid-October of this year. She proudly considers this as her most mature record. It was completed last February, but since her fiancé Lance Armstrong was preparing for his final Tour de France, she decided to release it only after the race was over.
I recently got hold of the album and took time to listen closely to it. The album title gave me the impression that she probably went back to her rock n’ roll roots so I was expecting a lot of those exciting guitar riffs and a fun upbeat rock sound.
Instead, I find a serious and a less fun woman singing love songs. The guitar riffs are gone and were replaced with adlibs that sound similar to what you hear in slow rock and country songs. The songs are heavily wrapped with string arrangements that carried a melancholic bittersweet tone. It is an emotional album, but she comes out too smitten; a little too mushy. Definitely not the Sheryl Crow I know.
But on second thought, Wildflower is not all that bad. It’s just different, and it shows a side of Sheryl the world hasn’t seen yet. It’s a nice departure from her pair of leather jeans. Her idea of fun is no longer a gig in a rock house with the beer, smoke and the noise. She’s definitely mellower, and there’s a certain ripeness to her songs.
Ultimately, I think the album is an open declaration of her love life and every song is an expression of her deep affection for Lance. In fact, if you try putting all the lyrics together, it would sound like a love letter. Even the one fast track in the album, Live It Up, sounds like Lance’s workout music.
I can only say she was probably experiencing pure pre-engagement bliss and Wildflower was the result of that. And although I can’t relate to it, I am moved by her courage to admit that she’s swept off her feet. It just needs a lot of getting used to from my end as her listener. In the end, there’s nothing wild about Wildflower, but it tells you that people change. And that should be okay.
They say that love is in the air, never is it clear How to put it close and make it stay Butterflies are free to fly and so they fly away and I’m left to carry on and wonder why Even through it all, I’m always on your side SHERYL CROW Wildflower 2005
(November 12, 2005 issue)
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