Songoftheday 6/1/23 - My friend the communist holds meetings in his RV, I can't afford his gas so I'm stuck here watching TV...

 

 

"Soak Up The Sun" - Sheryl Crow

from the album C'mon, C'mon (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #17 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 21 

Today's song comes from singer/songwriter Sheryl Crow, whose 1998 album The Globe Sessions had landed a top ten pop radio hit with "My Favorite Mistake" that was still able to crack the top-40 after Billboard magazine changed their chart rules to allow any song with radio airplay to make the Hot 100. The following year, the record was reissued with an extra song, Crow's remake of the Guns N' Roses classic "Sweet Child Of Mine", which she recorded for the soundtrack to the Adam Sandler comedy Big Daddy. Sheryl's version missed the Hot 100, but went to #29 on Billboard's older-skewing Adult Top-40 format chart, reaching #30 on the British singles chart, and winning Crow a Grammy Award in 2000 for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. Later in 1999, after she finished touring behind the record, Crow released her first live record, Sheryl Crow And Friends: Live In Central Park. The star-studded affair got to #107 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and was nominated for three Grammys. She won Best Female Rock Performance again for her live take on the best song on her last album, "There Goes The Neighborhood". Her live collab with the (Dixie) Chicks, "Strong Enough", was up for Best Country Collaboration, losing to Faith Hill and Tim McGraw for "Let's Make Love", while a duet with Sarah McLachlan, "The Difficult Kind", lost to BB King and Dr. John for "Is You Is, Or Is You Ain't (My Baby)". Crow also contributed a cover of Hank Williams' "Long Gone Lonesome Blues" to a tribute album, Timeless in 2001, which got her nominated for a Grammy for Best Solo Female Country Performance, which went home with Dolly Parton for her bluegrass transformation of the rock hit "Shine" (talk about an UNO switch). 

All that critical exposure kept her alive in the music business, but mainstream radio was quite a different beast when Crow returned in the spring of 2002 with her fourth studio album C'mon C'mon. A repositioning to more sunny California rock sounds, the mood of the set was captured by the lead single "Soak Up The Sun". Written and produced by Sheryl with Jeff Trott, the lyrics have the by-then millionaire attempting to put on the persona of "the common woman" who can't afford the good things in life (or afford spreading what she has), but decides to appreciate the priceless things in life. It's a bit preachy for Crow's sardonic delivery, but the production is cheery enough to make the medicine go down easier. For me her vocals are so overprocessed to sound almost robotic, but the production does go halfway to trying to capture the Beach Boys vibe. And since real instruments were becoming scarce on pop radio, it stood out from the pack, and Crow found herself back on the charts, though maybe not to the heights from her beginnings...

"Soak Up The Sun" returned Crow to the top-40 on Billboard's Hot 100 in July of 2002. On the radio, the song climbed to #15 on the Mainstream Top-40 airplay chart, #5 on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") format, and spent nine weeks at #1 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 radio panel. The dance remixes of the track, done by Mac Quayle and Victor Calderone, transformed the song into a tribal house thumper, and it became her first and biggest hit on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart topping it for a week. Internationally, the single made the top-40 in Croatia (#7), Austria (#15), Switzerland (#15), the United Kingdom (#16), New Zealand (#19), Canada (#24), Ireland (#36), and Romania (#39). The C'mon C'mon album, released in April of that year, spent a week at #2 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, lingering on the list for over a year and selling over a million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2003, Crow was a magnet again, nominated for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for "Soak Up The Sun", losing to Norah Jones for her unstoppable lite-jazz juggernaut "Don't Know Why". The C'mon C'mon album was also up for Best Rock Album, which went to Bruce Springsteen for The Rising, as well as Best Non-Classical Engineered Album, which again went to Norah Jones for her set Come Away With Me. 

Sheryl tried to continue the California vibes with her follow-up single, "Steve McQueen", but mainstream radio ignored the peppy rocker, and while it climbed to #13 on the Adult Top-40 airplay chart, the single stalled down at #88 on the Hot 100, and missed the British top-40 at #44. Oddly enough, another set of club remixes helped it almost make the Dance chart top-10 at #11. However the song did reward Crow another Grammy Award, this time for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. Another cut from the C'mon C'mon album, "It's So Easy" with Don Henley, also got nominated for Best Pop Vocal Collaboration, which went to Santana and Michelle Branch for "The Game Of Love". A final radio single from the album, title cut "C'mon C'mon", spent five weeks on Billboard's Adult Top-40 chart with a high of #36. 

Sheryl will be back to the series.

(5/10)

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Here's the "Sunsweep" remix by Mac Quayle and Victor Calderone that helped the song top the dance chart...

 

 Here's Crow touring behind the album in 2002 in Japan...

Next up, at a show in New York in 2017...

And finally for BBC's Live At Home in 2022...

Up tomorrow: A country newcomer like weekend anonymity.