SONG OF THE DAY
“Leaving Las Vegas” by Sheryl Crow (Tuesday Night Music Club, A & M Records, 1993). Written by David Baerwald, Bill Bottrell, Sheryl Crow, Kevin Gilbert & David Ricketts.
INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)
– “Leaving Las Vegas” is a rock song by Sheryl Crow that appears on her debut album Tuesday Night Music Club, and was the album’s, and Crow’s, first successful single in the U.S. (“Run, Baby, Run” didn’t chart).
– Sheryl Crow performed the song on her live album Sheryl Crow and Friends: Live from Central Park.
– “Leaving Las Vegas”‘s title was based on a book by the same name by the late John O’Brien, who was a good friend of the song’s writer, David Baerwald. However, on a performance of Late Night with David Letterman, Sheryl Crow stated that the song was “autobiographical.” This infuriated Baerwald, and the rest of the original Tuesday Night Music Club, who helped write most of the album, Tuesday Night Music Club. Though O’Brien’s suicide occurred soon after this incident, his family came forward to state there was no connection.
– According to Crow, the song was recorded while she and the rest of the band were under the influence of LSD.
– The song was accompanied by Sheryl’s first ever videoclip. It was directed by David Hogan, who also shot her video for “All I Wanna Do”. The 1993 video shows Sheryl performing the song with her guitar in the dark, with only some parts of her face lit up. Other scenes include famous Vegas-images such as dancers and Elvis Presley-lookalikes walking on a highway, obviously “leaving Las Vegas”. The video uses an edited version of the song.