Showtime's Sheryl fails to properly frame Sheryl Crow's influence and legacy

Pitchfork

The 95-minute documentary from director Amy Scott "attempts to highlight the rise and long reach of the now-beloved singer-songwriter, and its many asides dutifully add up to a warm, flattering representation of a tremendously successful artist," says Allison Hussey. "The documentary makes strange work of Crow’s actual music career, however, squeezing her triumphs between anecdotes where she’s forced to explain men’s bad behavior, failing to probe the more interesting emotional forces that animate Crow’s inner life. How is it that we hear about MJ jabbing Bubbles with a Bic pen—from two people, no less—but nothing about the whole first album that Crow scrapped because its production was too squeaky-clean? In its efforts to entertain audiences with tabloid gossip and bold names, Sheryl sometimes misses the bigger picture of a woman who worked hard to build her success on her own terms."

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• Sheryl Crow wasn't interested in a documentary until she watched Showtime's The Go-Gos during lockdown: "When my manager came to me and said at the beginning of the pandemic, I think it’s time for us to make a documentary, I’m just like, I’m not dead," she says. But she says the Go-Go's documentary “made me rethink who they were." Crow adds: "There are a lot of people that have preconceived notions about who I am based on some very happy-sounding songs," but s wants viewers “to see that there’s a person behind all of it,” and that “a woman in a business that’s predominantly run by men has a lot of stories that still resonate.”
• Sheryl transforms into an examination of what it took to make it in music, especially for a woman in the pre-#MeToo era