I think corporate executives have kidnapped Sheryl Crow, and they are holding her talent for ransom.
They must be using strong drugs and having whoever that nasty old man who creates all the pop sensations write and produce her songs, and I’m afraid that soon they’ll ask her to just dance on stage and give up playing the guitar.
Whoever is responsible for the agony that is Crow’s latest and fourth album, “C’mon, C’mon,” it has utterly disappointed me.
You’ve probably heard the new single, “Soak up the Sun,” and it’s not bad. It’s happy and good for driving and what you would expect of a single. But the disappointing part is that when you play the CD, you are sitting there thinking, “any day now the thoughtful lyrics and mature musical talent will start.”
You keep pressing the fast forward button, thinking that the Sheryl Crow that you know will come through, but she doesn’t.
In comparison to other female pop stars, the album is good, but compared to what she has been for the duration of her career, it’s a serious let down.
But what tips me off that this isn’t the real Crow is that the songs seem to lack her famous honesty. What happened to the Crow who described the evolution of recovering from a bad breakup in “It Don’t Hurt.” Instead we get the same sentence repeated over and over.
A lot of people have made the excuse for this travesty of a album saying breakup albums are always better and the subsequent ones after are always lightweights in comparison.
But even Crow’s earlier, upbeat “It’s Hard to Make a Stand,” had depth, honesty, and musical prowess.
The songs in “C’mon, C’mon” have underbaked lyrics like “I’m gonna soak up the sun/ got my 45 on/ So I can rock on,” and the unbelievably cheesy “Diamond Road,” that throws pearls of wisdom such as “Don’t miss the diamonds along the way/ every road has led us here today.”
In “Soak up the Sun,” multi-platinum star Crow sings about not having money for gas, not having “didly squat.” If the public wanted upbeat dishonest pop cheese we could listen to Brittney Spears talk about “do it to me one more time,” while she claims to be a virgin.
Many say you can only be disappointed in people you once trusted, and I trusted the name of Sheryl Crow. I trusted and I heard the CD only to be disappointed. I’m only glad that I didn’t get a chance to buy it as soon as it came out. But more than disappointed, I’m sad that the level of the female rock star has to be lowered to be successful today.
In a Rolling Stone interview, Crow says, “I think albums are getting ready to be a thing of the past.”
At this rate, they will be.
