Sheryl Crow and the mirror games

A look back at the past. Nothing new in what journalist and writer David Remnick calls holding the note, in his recent book Holding the Note (Debate, 2024); after interpretive peaks and overwhelming fame, comes tranquility. The focus shifts in another direction. Big tours and sales are part of the past. The new times are those in which Sheryl Crow (1962) comes out to defend a bouquet of good songs that remind us who she was, not the indefiniteness of who she is now. And this is her present. The new material was reduced to the song Evolution which gives title to her new album, of which she did not perform any other piece.

The purple has passed. The Nashville-based guitarist knows what the longevity of a worthy songbook is. And the attending public, who did not fill the Montjuïc space, understood it that way. The audience knew what they were going for. Delighted with nostalgia. For pop and rock, the rumor that any past time was better is a dogma of faith. And a stumbling block when it comes to innovating or, at least, having the possibility of reinventing oneself.

After half past nine at night, the singer from Missouri appeared on stage, accompanied by her quintet. For a few seconds, Start Me Up was heard, one of the best songs by the Stones, included in their last great album, Tattoo You (1981). The singer's sensibility for country rock is notorious, with a deep Stonesy smell. It must be remembered that the British, at the beginning of the 1970s, eagerly immersed themselves in the old musical legacy of the Deep South of the United States; they left a significant mark on a couple of albums that veteran followers of the group know by heart.

Crow became known in the nineties with a success as unexpected as it was consolidated over time. And with millionaire sales figures. With the album C'mon, C'mon (2002), from which she performed Soak Up the Sun, the decline of her career began. The guitarist and songwriter based her presentation on her first two albums, Tuesday Night Music Club (1992) and Sheryl Crow (1996). From the first, she performed, with varying luck, Run Baby Run, in a rock key; Strong Enough; Leaving Las Vegas, all feeling, and her first hit, All I Wanna Do, which strangely remained in no man's land because it did not infuse enough of the pop energy it is supposed to have, and fell short in a rock and roll key. From the second, she sang A Change Would Do You Good; Hard to Make a Stand; the notable If It Makes You Happy, with the band in combustion, just as happened with Everyday is a Winding Road, with drops of the Stones' Jumpin' Jack Flash.

It is known that the songwriter of Steve McQueen and co-author of I Shall Believe, the song that closed the session and by far the best of the performance, was part of the change from country to a huge brand, which before the turn of the century was known as americana. In a parallel, singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, recognized by an immense minority of admirers, was too rock for country, and too country for rock. Crow has lived a similar enigma, replacing rock with pop. In the double album Live at the Capitol Theatre. 2017 Be Myself Tour (2018), the singer was true to the title. However, in her reunion with the Barcelona audience, the guitarist barely found the cooking point of the musical essence that characterizes her. If the intention was to create a mirror game of a still-living repertoire, in practice, the intention was far from translating into a tangible fact.

As the set progressed, the sound became too dense. The guitarists were almost always on the verge of demonstrating the oversized use of their respective instruments beyond country pop. This effort often did not match the atmosphere of the song. The noise and distortion were not pertinent. The drummer's heavy and inflexible metronome didn't help either. Furthermore, the venue's acoustics are historically known for their particular sound. The space is not made for enjoying the subtleties of acoustic guitars, and the leader's voice often became submerged in the sonic density coming from the stage. More than an hour had passed since the balance between the drive and enthusiasm of Real Gone, which she composed for the movie Cars (2006) and with which she opened the performance, had vanished.

One should not shy away from the fact that Sheryl Crow's repertoire is very similar throughout her European tour: there are only small changes in order or the suppression or substitution of one song for another. Faced with the robotization of concerts, where everything is planned, a spectator blurted out: "the singer has not returned from the past, she has simply become a sequel to herself."