Songoftheday 6/19/19 - We are drinking beer at noon on Tuesday in the bar that faces the giant car wash...

"All I Wanna Do" - Sheryl Crow
from the album Tuesday Night Music Club (1993)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #2 (six weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 27

Today's song of the day comes from pop singer/songwriter Sheryl Crow, who came from the heartland of southern Missouri to singing advertisement jingles before she landed her first big break as a backup singer on Michael Jackson's Bad tour in the late 1980s. Moving to Los Angeles, she continued to do backup work as well as TV stints, and recorded an aborted album with Hugh Padgham (Phil Collins' guy), before hooking up with a group of musicians named for their weekly jam get-togethers, the Tuesday Night Music Club. It included her then-boyfriend Kevin Gilbert and Brian McLeod (both of the band Toy Matinee, which had quite a following here in New Jersey), as well as David Baerwald and David Ricketts, who as David + David had a top-40 hit in 1986 with "Welcome To The Boomtown", along with producer Bill Bottrell and bass play Dan Schwartz. Together they worked on music that would eventually become Sheryl's debut album Tuesday Night Music Club. Released in the summer of 1993, the record's blues-rock lead single "Run Baby Run" relatively flopped, where it missed the American charts and only made it to #83 on the British chart (it would eventually return there to climb to #24). Also in England, the Raitt-like song "What I Can Do For You" was released at the start of 1994 and went to #84 there. The second single in America, "Leaving Las Vegas", became Crow's first taste of true success, becoming a minor pop hit at #60 in Billboard magazine's pop Hot 100 chart (and #66 in the UK), while peaking at #8 on their Modern Rock radio chart. MTV play of the video helped gain exposure, and even though the song wasn't a top-40 hit, it definitely got her name out there.

But it would be a breezy song with lyrics cribbed from a poem as a third single in the U.S. that would be the biggest pop hit of Crow's career. "All I Wanna Do" was based on words from a poem titled "Fun" by Wyn Cooper...

Fun “All I want is to have a little fun Before I die,” says the man next to me Out of nowhere, apropos of nothing. He says His name’s William but I’m sure he’s Bill Or Billy, Mac or Buddy; he’s plain ugly to me, And I wonder if he’s ever had fun in his life. We are drinking beer at noon on Tuesday, In a bar that faces a giant car wash. The good people of the world are washing their cars On their lunch hours, hosing and scrubbing As best they can in skirts and suits. They drive their shiny Datsuns and Buicks Back to the phone company, the record store, The genetic engineering lab, but not a single one Appears to be having fun like Billy and me. I like a good beer buzz early in the day, And Billy likes to peel the labels From his bottles of Bud and shred them on the bar. Then he lights every match in an oversized pack, Letting each one burn down to his thick fingers Before blowing and cursing them out. A happy couple enters the bar, dangerously close To one another, like this is a motel, But they clean up their act when we give them A look. One quick beer and they’re out, Down the road and in the next state For all I care, smiling like idiots. We cover sports and politics and once, When Billy burns his thumb and lets out a yelp, The bartender looks up from his want-ads. Otherwise the bar is ours, and the day and the night And the car wash too, the matches and Buds And the clean and dirty cars, the sun and the moon And every motel on this highway. It’s ours you hear? And we’ve got plans, so relax and let us in— All we want is to have a little fun. Copyright © 1987 by Wyn Cooper

With music from Crow, Baerwald, Bottrell, and Gilbert underneath this, anchored by a bassline that slinked through the record like a snake, and "All I Wanna Do" became a massive success...

"All I Wanna Do" became Sheryl's first and biggest top-40 pop hit in October of 1994. The song placed on both the Modern (#4) and Mainstream (#35) rock radio format charts in Billboard magazine, while it also crossed over to their Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio tally in a big way, spending two months (eight weeks) at #1. Internationally, the single was just as big, topping the chart in Canada (four weeks) and Australia (one week), as well as reaching the top ten in the UK (#4), New Zealand (#4), France (#5), Ireland (#5), Austria (#5), Germany (#10), and the Netherlands (#10). At the Grammy Awards in 1995, "All I Wanna Do" won trophies for Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and was nominated for "Song of the Year" (which went to Bruce Springsteen's "Streets Of Philaelphia"). Crow also won Best New Artist that year as well.

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Here's a second music video directed by Sofia Coppola...