Tuesday Night Smash — Part I: The Day before Tuesday | The Story Behind the Making of Sheryl Crow’s debut smash Tuesday Night Music Club.
Due to the amount of information surrounding Sheryl Crow’s debut album, I have decided to break this up into a series of posts. This initial post discusses her rise into the music industry and her shelved debut album. The following two parts will go into a deep dive on the first and second half of her debut album. Along with my regular interpretation of the song’s lyrics are numerous interview segments that provide further history and insight on the album and its creation. I have included my regular review score at the end of Part III of this series. Part IV of this series dives deep into the fall out of the writing collective and Sheryl’s subsequent journey into her sophomore release.
Sheryl Crow is very much a household name today. It is interesting to see the evolution of her career from the beginning. Crow started off teaching music after graduating from the University of Missouri with a degree of in voice and piano. It would be an opportunity to write a jingle for McDonald’s that would take her on the path to her current career. She told CBS this about the opportunity:
“It wound up going network, which is national. It lasted for about a year, and I made about $40 grand. And I was making about $17 grand teaching for a year, and that was 45 minutes of work. I thought, ‘Wow! This is amazing. Maybe I can do it in LA.”
She moved to California to begin work in the music business. In 1988, Sheryl would join Michael Jackson’s team of background singers for his Bad tour. She would continue to pound the pavement in order to get her name out there and start her career as an artist. During this time period, she would contribute sing backup for Don Henley, Jimmy Buffet, and Stevie Wonder. She was able to get a few tracks released. Her song “Heal Somebody” would appear on the soundtrack to the series Bright Angel and the song “Welcome to the Real Life” for the film Stone Cold in 1991. She would also get the song “Hundreds of Tears” onto the soundtrack for the film Pointe Break in 1991. Another break for Crow would be her duet with Kenny Loggins on the track “I Would Do Anything”. All this would colluminate in her working on her debut album. This is not Tuesday Night Music Club. The debut that I speak of would ultimately never be released. You can find these tracks to the unreleased 1992 album on Youtube. The sound would be drastically different from what we would get on her first commercial outing, much for 90s pop rock than the rootsy sound she’s known for now. Below are a few of the tracks that she wrote for this record that would go on to be recorded by other artists
The track “All Kinds of People” would go on to be recorded by Tina Turner for her 1996 album Wildest Dreams.
The 8th track off of the album “Father Son” would go on to be recorded by Wynonna Judd and retitled “Father Sun” for her 1993 album Tell Me Why.
Crow also passed the track “Love You Blind” to Celine Dion for her 1992 album, but it would ultimately not be used for the album. Both Sheryl and A&M would choose the shelf the project and thus she would go back to the drawing board. At the time, she was dating fellow musician and songwriter Kevin Gilbert. It would be Gilbert’s group of songwriting friends, David Baerwald, David Ricketts, Bill Bottrell, Brian MacLeod, and Dan Schwartz, that would come together to rework and write the tracks that would go on to become her official debut album Tuesday Night Music Club. The title to the album is a nod to the name the group called themselves when they came together to write. Ironically, the album took time to garner to success that it would get. If you ask anyone about the record, they will bring up the infectious hit “All I Wanna Do”, but this was the third single off the album. The first two singles off the album, “Run Baby Run” and “What I Can Do For You” both barely charted. The 3rd try really was the charm for Crow. This would jettison her to stardom and give her 3 Grammy awards including best new artist.
Part II of this series will take us on the musical journey of the first half of Sheryl Crow’s Tuesday Night Music Club.
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