Sheryl Crow has recalled the moment Walmart demanded she change a controversial lyric in one of her earlier songs, but she didn't give in for the sake of the truth.
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The legendary country singer recently sat down with Lee C. Camp on the No Small Endeavor podcast, where she spoke on a range of topics. After talking about how she believes contracting breast cancer saved her life, she went on to talk about one of her earlier songs.
Crow mentioned how her early songwriting was significantly inspired by what was going on around her politically and culturally. Her father encouraged discussion surrounding current affairs, which gave her a great insight into the world.
Also, the music being played were deeply political. "Everything that was political was getting played on the radio," she reflected. "To me, that's what you wrote about. You wrote about what you saw, what you lived, what you experienced."
And one of her earlier songs, "Love Is A Good Thing," the song opens with a distressing visual. She had read about a 14-year-old who bought a gun and proceeded to kill a 12-year-old, and wrote it into the song. And where did the boy get the gun? Walmart.
Considering Walmart was to be a distributor of the album, Sheryl Crow, they had a problem with the lyric.
Walmart Tried To Remove Their Name From Sheryl Crow's "Love Is A Good Thing"
"It blew up," she said of the song. But Walmart resisted the song.
"[Walmart] wouldn't carry my record. They made a huge, big stink about it; my record was banned. They said if I changed it to Kmart, they would carry my record."
There we have it, Walmart tried to throw the blame over to Kmart.
"It became like this big thing, and for better, for worse."
The controversy both helped and harmed Sheryl Crow's record. "A lot of people knew about the record because of that," but "60% of Americans could not buy my record because Walmart didn't carry it."
She didn't want to make any changes, however. "Hell no, I'm not gonna change it so you're comfortable with the truth, and so that I make more money."
"I think that stance was just largely how I've been brought up... It's always been a necessity for me. For me, music has been the place where I can make sense of the madness."
