Culture
Olivia Rodrigo Sings Sheryl Crow Her Own Song Back Like Returning a Library Book With Glitter On It
By Bruno Von Falken, . BSN Network. Satire.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The BMI Troubadour Award, which exists to honor songwriters of towering cultural achievement, was presented Tuesday evening to Sheryl Crow at a ceremony in Nashville that included remarks, performances, and at least one moment that music historians will describe as 'complicated.'
Olivia Rodrigo, 23, took the stage unannounced and sang 'Strong Enough,' a song Sheryl Crow wrote in 1994, to Sheryl Crow, who was seated approximately forty feet away and had nowhere to go.
Crow, for her part, was photographed smiling. Crow is a professional.
The BMI Troubadour ceremony is a formal annual event in which the music industry gathers to tell one of its own that yes, fine, you did do a lot, we acknowledge it, here is a plaque and an evening of people performing your songs at you while you sit in a chair that has been decided upon in advance. This year's honoree had been informed she would be celebrated. She had presumably not been informed by whom, or in what register.
'Strong Enough' is a song about whether a man is emotionally equipped to love a complicated woman. It is not, on its face, a song Olivia Rodrigo needs to cover. Rodrigo writes her own songs about whether men are emotionally equipped to love a complicated woman, and does so with considerable commercial success and significantly more exclamation points. The choice to perform this particular song is either an act of deep reverence or a reminder that the genre has been running the same play for thirty years and the only thing that changes is the Spotify algorithm.
Chris Stapleton also performed. Eric Church performed. Several other adults with established catalogs and functional vocal cords performed. None of them generated the volume of online commentary that comes with being twenty-three and very famous and walking into a room where Sheryl Crow is sitting and opening your mouth.
Rodrigo's appearance was described in multiple outlets as a 'surprise.' The surprise appears to have been for the audience. Whether it was a surprise for Crow is unclear, though Crow's expression in photographs suggests the expression of a woman who has survived several decades of the music industry and can process most stimuli without visible distress.
John Esposito, Chairman and CEO of Warner Music Nashville, said from the podium that Crow's influence 'transcends genre, transcends generation, and transcends the ordinary boundaries of what we think songwriting can be.' He then returned to his seat. No one asked any follow-up questions.
The evening's architecture deserves a moment of appreciation. Someone, presumably a committee, decided that the correct way to make a legendary songwriter feel honored was to fill a room with other musicians and have them perform her songs while she watched. This is the music industry's version of throwing someone a birthday party where all the guests eat the birthday cake while the birthday person observes from a chair labeled 'HONOREE' and receives a small trophy for having made the cake in the first place.
Rodrigo, who is four years old in industry terms and has already had a documentary, a stadium tour, and a cultural moment that caused several think pieces to be written about whether her sadness was too relatable, sang the song well by all accounts. She always does. That is not the point. The point is that somewhere between the opening chord and the final note, Sheryl Crow had to sit in a room and listen to someone younger and currently more famous explain her own song back to her, and then smile, and then stand, and then receive a plaque.
The plaque was not shown in any photographs reviewed for this report.
Crow is sixty-four. She has won nine Grammy Awards. She has been making music since before Rodrigo's parents had decided on each other. None of this is the point either.
The point, if there is one, is that the music industry invented a ceremony specifically designed to honor its elders, and then booked the guests in a way that makes the elder feel both celebrated and slightly browsed, like a vintage shop that has been discovered by someone with a TikTok account.
Sheryl Crow clapped. She will be fine.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/olivia-rodrigo-sings-for-sheryl-crow-nashville-1235626697/