SONG OF THE DAY
“My Favorite Mistake” by Sheryl Crow (The Globe Sessions, A&M Records, 1998). Written by Sheryl Crow & Jeff Trott.
INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)
– My Favorite Mistake” (or “My Favourite Mistake” in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth) is the first single from Sheryl Crow’s third album The Globe Sessions.
– The song was written about a relationship with a man who proves to be unfaithful and is widely believed to have been written about Eric Clapton. There have also been those who believed the lover in the song to have been based on Jakob Dylan. However, Crow has refused to say who the song was about, telling Billboard Magazine on the release of her album, “Oh, there will be just so much speculation, and because of that there’s great safety and protection in the fact that people will be guessing so many different people and I’m the only person who will ever really know. I’m really private about who I’ve had relationships with, and I don’t talk about them in the press. I don’t even really talk about them with the people around me.” Crow compared “My Favorite Mistake” to “You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon. However, she later claimed that she doesn’t look at her relationship with Clapton as a mistake and verified that it was definitely not about him.
– Released in 1998, the single peaked at #20 becoming Crow’s fifth Top 20 single in the USA, while reaching the top 10 in Canada. In the UK, it reached #9, her last Top 10 single in Britain.
– The song was written by Crow and her regular collaborator Jeff Trott.
– The songs on The Globe Sessions including “My Favorite Mistake” were written in the first person as opposed the narrative songs featured on her first two albums.
– Crow was having so much difficulty with the honesty of the lyrics on the album that she was considering cancelling the release of the record in June 1998 and cancelled an appearance at Lilith Fair in the summer of that year.
– The song was recorded at her own Globe Recording Studio in New York. Despite the difficulties in recording the album, Crow told the BBC in 2005 that: “My favorite single is ‘My Favorite Mistake’; it was a lot of fun to record and it’s still a lot of fun to play.”
– A&M Records heavily promoted the single and The Globe Sessions, however Crow took time off from promoting to tour Vietnam in September 1998 with Steve Earle to promote the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
– Samuel Bayer directed the video which was played heavily on both MTV and VH1.
– Crow was the artist of the month on VH1 for September 1998 with an episode of “Storytellers” being devoted to her.
– The single debuted at #23 on the Billboard Hot 100 on December 5, 1998 and reached #20, as well as reaching #2 on the Adult Top 40 charts.
– “My Favorite Mistake” was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in the Grammy Awards of 1999, losing to Céline Dion for “My Heart Will Go On”. Crow won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album.
– Crow performed the song on her live album Sheryl Crow and Friends: Live from Central Park. A different live version appears on some formats of the There Goes the Neighborhood single.
– It was nominated for Album of the Year, Best Rock Album and Best Engineered Non-Classical Album at the 1999 Grammys, winning the latter two awards.