In the music world, it’s pretty much a given that the mellower the artist, the more troubled he or she may be — think of the demons lurking behind those all those languid guitar strums or yacht-rock tempos. (See: the Doobie Brothers.) And thanks to the new documentary Sheryl, which premieres on Showtime May 6th, we can now add another name to that list: Sheryl Crow.
As we approach next year’s 30th anniversary of Tuesday Night Music Club, the album that made her a star after several false starts, Crow’s impact seems strangely undervalued. In addition to interviews with the singer and superstar pals ranging from Joe Walsh and Keith Richards to Brandi Carlile and Jason Isbell, Sheryl includes recreations of a young Crow flipping through her LP collection, pausing over albums by heroes like James Taylor and Fleetwood Mac.
Crow was indeed an inheritor of the soft-rock vibe embodied by those acts. But back in the grunge-focused Nineties, she also proudly kept alive the AOR FM-rock tradition of artists like, say, Tom Petty — and the fact that a woman was leading that charge, at that point in time, was momentous. A few years back, opening for the briefly reunited Hootie and the Blowfish at a show in South Carolina, Crow played a vigorous set of those radio hits: ”If It Makes You Happy,” “A Change Will Do You Good,” “My Favorite Mistake,” “Every Day Is a Winding Road.” But the mere fact that she was opening for them — a band whose moment faded pretty quickly — spoke to the way in which Crow is still taken for granted.
Fittingly, Sheryl explores the way that Crow’s road was not only winding but also relentlessly turbulent. More than just another one of those authorized-infomercial music docs that are all too prevalent these days, Sheryl (directed by Amy Scott) transforms into an examination of what it took to make it in music, especially for a woman in the pre-#MeToo era. In…