Sheryl Crow Never Intended To Record What Became Her First Big Hit

In 1994, Sheryl Crow released her fourth single, “All I Wanna Do”, on her debut album, Tuesday Night Music Club. The song was written by Crow, along with David Baerwald, Bill Bottrell, and Kevin Gilbert. Wyn Cooper is also credited as a writer, since the song was inspired by his 1987 “Fun” poem.

The chorus of “All I Wanna Do” says, “All I wanna do is have some fun / I got a feelin’ I’m not the only one / All I wanna do is have some fun / Until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard.” 

“All I Wanna Do” is Crow’s first No. 1 single, and her first Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It also gave Crow her first two Grammy Awards. So, it’s surprising that she never planned on recording the feel-good tune.

“The song was easy for me to sell because it was a character I could easily slip into,” Crow recalled. “There was a lot of drinking going on in my life then, a lot of late-night bars. The song was a throwaway. It wasn’t even going to be on the album. My little brother kept saying, ‘This is a big hit.’”

What Sheryl Crow Says About Writing “All I Wanna Do”

Crow was still early in her career when “All I Wanna Do” was written. The record’s name comes from weekly jam sessions, held on Tuesday nights, with Crow and other musicians. It’s there that “All I Wanna Do” was born.

“We were jamming in the studio, and I picked up this poem in a book,” Crow remembers. “The first line was, ‘All I wanna do is have some fun.’ It encapsulated what was going on in LA, a real extreme feeling of apathy and defeat. It’s masked in this light pop ditty, but it’s about somebody down and out, sitting in a bar watching their life go by. I contacted the poet, Wyn Cooper, and he was really pleased.”

Still, Crow acknowledges that “All I Wanna Do” was far from her favorite song, at least at first.

“There was a time when I hated playing it,” she later told The Guardian. “But I realized that that song took me all over the world, places a kid from a tiny town never dreamed of seeing.”

After releasing “All I Wanna Do”, Crow released “Strong Enough” and “Can’t Cry Anymore”. Both songs, also from Tuesday Night Music Club, were successful, although neither of them reached No. 1.

Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images

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