Random “Q”sings: 2011 CMT Awards Show, Sheryl Crow

The CMT Music Awards were held last week. This is a show where country fans vote for all of the awards. It is held to coincide with Fanfare – an extremely popular event held in Nashville where fans can wait everyday for hours to personally meet their country heroes.

I won’t take the time to recap the award winners on what turned out to be a very pedestrian show. One highlight for me, though, was the opening sequence of Taylor Swift and Shania Twain satirizing “Thelma and Louise.” Another Highlight was Lady Antebellum breaking into a version of Prince’s “Kiss!” The final “highlight,” I guess, was something that was totally unscheduled: Sheryl Crow momentarily showed her underwear while she sang “Collide”, her current single, with Kid Rock. “Collide” is the couple’s attempt to try to recapture the magic of “Picture,” – a “monster” hit that they had several years ago. I prefer to call it a “bear song.” This refers to the old joke about two people being chased by a bear. One person tells the other person that he doesn’t have to outrun the bear. He just has to run faster than him! “Picture” was a bear song. It wasn’t all that good. It was just better than most of the other songs that were out at that time.

“Collide,” while recreating the “winning formula,” is a much different kind of song. First, it is a true duet, meaning that they both sing together for most of the song. On “Picture,” most of the singing is done separately. Sheryl provides the harmony. Both vocal performances are actually very good. Ah, but when you put the vocals together for the new song, they actually do collide, and they don’t sound very good when combined. The fact that there aren’t any great lines in the song doesn’t help either. No “I was headed to church/ I was off to drink you away” moment.

Now, let’s get back to Sheryl Crow’s underwear. Whoa! STI!!!* (Stop the Internet!) By default, this automatically becomes the most exciting thing she’s done in years!!! Honestly, I didn’t notice it when it happened. But in case you missed it, she announced to everyone watching the show that it happened and half apologized for it.

But then, CMT Insider had to question her about it – and show it a couple of more times. When your underwear is getting more attention than your music is, you’ve got problems.

Now I really like Sheryl Crow. Her first few albums are good enough to put her in the upper tier of most artists operating in the last twenty years. I’d say there were several simbies on each album that are still being played today. But she’s been coasting for a long time. I’d say ever since “Soak Up the Sun” came out. The song is half good. The chorus is light and hummable. Nothing wrong with that. The slower parts of the verses are good, too. It’s when the lyrics start to double time that it falls apart for me. All I hear is blah-blah blah-blah blah-blah blah, blah-blah blah-blah blah-blah blah. If she worked harder on it, it could’ve been a great song.

Last year’s cd, “100 Miles from Memphis,” was a flop. I hate to say that because she was supposed to be paying tribute to the music that she grew up listening to. You know: R&B, Soul Music. Ironically, the only thing missing in the songs was, hmmmm, let me think….. Oh, yeah. SOUL!!!!! I mean, she couldn’t even hit some of those notes in concert. Who let her put this out????!!!!

Now, if I had a band, I would have no problem having Sheryl Crow in it. She is a multi-instrumentalist, has an incredible voice, and at the worst, even if the band stunk that night, I could look over and see that eye candy! But that’s if she were in my band. Since she heads her own, she needs to have things more together than she does.

I’ve seen Sheryl a couple of times in concert – most recently last year at DTE Energy Theater. (A name I don’t understand because it means Detroit Energy Energy Theater. Huh? It’s like ATM machine. Automatic teller machine machine.) The old songs sounded fine, but not sharp. Almost as if she’s played them too many times. But the new songs were not received well. On top of that, she had a meltdown on stage. While playing the intro to “My Favorite Mistake,” she brought the band to a complete stop and f-bombed the sound. It sounded just fine to me. Then it started to get weird. She apologized for the first f-bomb by letting loose with another f-bomb and more swearing. Now I am far from a prude, but there were a lot of little kids there, for what most people probably thought would be a family show. I mean, they weren’t there to see Gilbert Gottfried!

I saw her another time at The Palace of Auburn Hills. It was the last show of the tour, which is usually very loose and often has a party atmosphere. For those reasons, I was really looking forward to it. Boy was I wrong. It was a dead atmosphere. To add to the strangeness, she wanted to film a segment of “Home,” an introspective piano ballad, for VH1. She didn’t like the way it was performed, so at the end of the show, she announced that they were going to do a couple of more takes of the song and that everyone was welcome to stay. Well, “Home” is a quiet, personal song, and, unfortunately, the Detroit Red Wings were in the NHL Playoffs, and some fans couldn’t stop shouting, “Go Wings” during the quietest moments. Now that wasn’t her fault, but for someone who brought a concert to a screeching halt because she felt something wasn’t quite right, she sure didn’t take control of the situation.

I don’t know. I’ve seen her twice now and both times I felt I didn’t get my money’s worth. And the second time, the ticket was free! Some good new music would fix this!

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Until next time, take care of yourself, and take care of each other!

Peace!
Q