“Watch you pretend to adore me”: The scathing Sheryl Crow song written about Eric Clapton?
Despite the pressures of being a woman in music, Sheryl Crow has always seemed considerably sure of her own positioning and how it shaped her career. “I’m from a different generation,” she once reflected, “but I always liked the mystique”. After all, she was also the girl who wanted to meet legendary bands standing by their aeroplane “with their packages showing in their jeans”.
Crow’s reminiscent pondering came as a response to being asked how she felt about her legendary status, which, for many women in rock, is a minefield. Not only does the word mean something else when applied to them, it also holds a slightly ambiguous implication, one that many aren’t entirely sure isn’t merely attached to the amount of time they have spent in the business.
“For a while, I was considered a ‘legacy’ artist, which means that I’ve been around long enough that I’m coming back in,” Crow bluntly told Vanity Fair. It makes sense, considering how the term itself has come to mean something inherently attached to nostalgia, more as a means of explaining the impact of someone who’s been around long enough to witness the different stages of the digital age.
However, while there are many advantages to “making it” in the current landscape, Crow remains steadfast in her position that rising to fame when she did was the only time she could have done it. Not only did it make sense for her personal trajectory, but it also implied a different kind of fan exchange and connection where the details of her private life weren’t as picked apart as they may have been today. And they were, even back then.
Using ‘My Favorite Mistake’ as an example—incidentally Crow’s favourite song of hers—the focus tends to fall, as always, on who the song was inspired by. Written about an ex-lover who cheated, the song regards the situation with a bittersweetness, proving her inability to let go of something that ended in a disruptive state of affairs. It’s enough to incite intrigue and the kind of unwarranted investigating that led many to believe it was about her previous partner, Eric Clapton.
However, Crow has always insisted that this speculation is false, though whether that came as a ploy of artistic intent to keep the meaning hidden and ambiguous is uncertain. They’ve remained friends, she later stated to Billboard, acknowledging that while the song sparks “much speculation”, she’s also “really private” and doesn’t like discussing her relationships with “the press” or even “the people around me”.
Still, whoever Crow was thinking of when she recalled having to “watch you pretend to adore me”, it’s clear this was someone who likely wishes to stay hidden in the shadows, always the heartbreaker who once made a mistake so demeaning it left none other than Crow seething. To rub salt into the wound, the song is also great, blending pop and rock sensibilities in a way that feels particularly biting beneath the melancholy exterior.
