| Track | Album |
|---|---|
| Steady On | Steady On |
| Round Of Blues | Fat City |
| One Cool Remove | Cover Girl |
| Get Out Of This House | A Few Small Repairs |
| Another Plane Went Down | Whole New You |
| So Good To See You | These Four Walls |
| American Jerusalem | All Fall Down |
| Matter Of Minutes | Live (2009) |
| I Used To Be A King | Uncovered |
| Ricochet In Time | Steady On: 30th Anniversary Acoustic |
When I posted a Toppermost for Mary Chapin Carpenter, I expressed my surprise that such a notable musician hadn’t already been covered, given that more than a 1,000 Top Tens had been selected.
Similarly with Shawn Colvin. She’s a three-time Grammy winner: in 1991 she won Best Contemporary Folk album for her 1989 debut Steady On, and in 1998 two awards for her song Sunny Came Home which was Record Of The Year and Song Of The Year winner.
She’s also been nominated on several other occasions and won a few other awards. She was never a consistently big seller in those long-gone days when record sales counted for something, and hardly dented the UK charts. Sunny Came Home just scraped into the Top 30 in 1996. Having said that, I would not suggest that she’s a cult artist, having had a level of success that most artists would regard as a triumph Her most successful album A Few Small Repairs went platinum in the USA.
The first time I heard Shawn was when a couple of her songs featured in the soundtrack to the film Me And Veronica. I saw the film as part of the 1992 London Film Festival. (The complete film is on YouTube). It includes Shawn’s songs Steady On and Ricochet In Time. I remember being distracted in trying to think of whom the singer could be while at the same time trying to pay attention to the film. Her name came up in the closing credits. She was a new name to me although her first album had been released in 1989. I noted it for future reference.
After Christmas that year, I was delighted to pick up a copy of Shawn’s debut album Steady On in the sale at our local Our Price (remember that chain of record shops?). I took it home and was really pleased to find that the songs I had already heard were as strong as I remembered and that the whole album was a really enjoyable set. I was hooked.
I’m going with the title track of that album as my first choice. This is her debut on The David Letterman Show, a show that she appeared on a few more times over the years.
There was a three-year gap between the release of her debut and her second album Fat City. For me it was less than a year, given I’d not long discovered her.
One huge benefit of writing this piece has been going back to listen to all of Shawn’s albums. This exploration of her back catalogue brought the realisation Fat City is my favourite of all she’s recorded.
It presents me with a tough choice as there are so many great songs. Longtime fans may disagree but I’m not selecting opening song Polaroids. I think Shawn has performed this song every time I’ve see her and it is a big audience favourite. However, there are so many songs I could select – Orion In The Sky, Climb On (A Back That’s Strong), Tennessee, Set The Prairie On Fire – but I’m going with Round Of Blues (the song whose lyrics provide the album title … I hear the sound of wheels, I know the rainbow’s end, I see lights in a fat city, I feel love again.)
A singer-songwriter releasing an album of covers for her third album still seems slightly strange, though the results were very successful. The album was titled Cover Girl. Her song choice was eclectic, ranging from a comparatively unknown song from the Band (the single Twilight, the original version of which I only listened to for the first time while compiling this piece – it preceded the final studio album from the original line up) to the Police’s million selling Every Little Thing (S)He Does Is Magic. I think Shawn’s version of Killing The Blues was the first I ever heard (though Chris Smither’s album Happier Blue had been released a year earlier, I think I heard his version later). When I saw Shawn touring in support of this album, she had the song’s composer Roly Salley playing with her on bass. The brilliant Steuart Smith was also there on guitar.
Other songs such as Satin Sheets, Window To The World and One Cool Remove, I have never heard performed by anyone other than Shawn.
This was a really strong collection of songs. Other candidates for Toppermost were (Looking For) The Heart Of Saturday Night, There’s A Rugged Road, Someday and This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody).
I’m choosing One Cool Remove (performed in this clip and on the disc with Mary-Chapin Carpenter) which has been a big favourite since the album was released, though it’s a close run thing with This Must Be The Place, which I might have chosen if there was a decent video.
Shawn’s fourth album A Few Small Repairs (1996) provided her big breakthrough. Sunny Came Home was a Grammy winner for Shawn (both Best Song and Record Of the Year) as well as breaking into the American Top 10. The album sold a million copies earning Shawn a platinum disc. The whole album was a really strong collection.
Despite the success of Sunny Came Home, the song I’m choosing is track 2 from the album Get Out Of This House.
For years I (and the majority of Shawn’s fans) thought this song was directed at an ex-lover. A couple of years ago she revealed, in the course of introducing the song, that wasn’t the case. It was self-directed. She had bought a house but as soon as she moved in she realised she had made a terrible mistake. So the exhortation “Get out of this house” is self directed, though it clearly works both ways.
The follow up to A Few Small Repairs was actually a Christmas album Holiday Songs And Lullabies. It was released two years on from its predecessor. I’m sure it’s excellent if that’s your thing. It isn’t mine, so it’s on to the next.
One of the benefits of compiling a Toppermost is going back and re-evaluating an artist’s work. Returning to Whole New You involved a complete reversal in my view of the album. I doubt that I had played it for twenty tears. My memory was that it was a fairly weak album with a single good song. I really don’t know why I had come to that conclusion because it’s a really good album. There’s a great one-two opening pair – A Matter Of Minutes, followed by the title track, before moving to the quietly introspective Nothing Like You.
So it continues. My favourite song from this album is titled Another Plane Went Down. This is one of Shawn’s strangest songs. A mix of (apparent) reality and dream. It opens with her seeing a news report about a plane crash. The second verse recalls time spent with a teenage friend and then a contemporaneous dream about a plane crash before moving onto the chorus in which she dreams of a lover’s infidelity. Another verse refers to a friend whose girlfriend died in a plane crash. I’m honestly not sure what I should make of it, but I love the sound the song makes.
There was a five year wait for Shawn’s next album, These Four Walls (2006). It was a worthwhile wait as it was a strong set of songs. Mostly originals, but also a couple of covers with songs by Paul Westerberg and the Bee Gees.
My choice from this album, So Good To See You, is another song with its contradictions. In one verse she sings: Intermittently I have to tell myself we had no past, And essentially that wanting you is just insane but then the chorus come in with It’s so good to see you.
When Shawn wrote American Jerusalem, she could never have imagined how prophetic her lyrics would prove to be. It was a bleak portrait of life for the homeless then. Now it’s : In the ashes of American Jerusalem, the prophets live their deaths out on the corner, the pretty people say there should’ve been a warning, but nobody heard it and Somebody must have got double, because I got none, I forgot to collect my share again.
Shawn’s first official live album was simply her and her guitar. There had been an earlier set titled Live ’88, released by an independent label which was mainly songs that later appeared on Steady On. This release included songs from all her albums, as well as a cover version of the Gnarls Barkley song Crazy. My choice is for the opening song from her These Four Walls album – A Matter Of Minutes, a song telling of the end of a relationship: I could count the good times we had on one hand and I can pack myself up in a matter of minutes, leave you all far behind give an idea of the emotional timbre of the song, though the melody almost contradicts this.
With Shawn’s first collection of cover songs, there are many contenders for inclusion here, but with her second set, Uncovered, there is only one song that I can consider and that is her cover of Graham Nash’s I Used To Be A King. In some ways this is strange as there is no change of gender. It was most likely written in the wake of his break up with Joni Mitchell and Shawn performs it perfectly straight.
I’m not suggesting Uncovered is a weak album. There are some great covers of great songwriters: it opens with a strong one-two of Bruce Springsteens’s Tougher Than The Rest, followed by Paul Simon’s American Tune. Covers of Tom Waits, Crowded House, Robert Earl Keen and The Band are also included. David Crosby joined her on a version of Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street. However, since the first time I heard the album the Nash composition just stood out, head and shoulders above the rest. There’s an intensity and truthfulness that Shawn brings to her performance. Although the video here is a solo performance (and I think it’s absolutely magnificent) the album version is accompanied by a band, with some lovely steel guitar from Milo Deering. Maybe Shawn was performing this song after a break up of her own (I have no idea), but there is such emotional depth it’s impossible to consider any other song from this second collection of cover songs.
My final choice takes me back to where it all began for me and it is the acoustic version of Ricochet In Time from the 30th anniversary reworking of her debut.
A song about the life of a travelling musician: I kill dreams in the chase, I slap love in the face, ricochet in time to the music. I would hazard that those words would find themselves repeating over the years as Shawn tried to manage her personal and professional lives.
I haven’t included anything from the Colvin & Earle album that she made with Steve Earle. It’s such a different album from the rest of her work but unfortunately I don’t find it especially memorable.
That album was the last time Shawn Colvin performed new and original songs. The six songs where she has a writing credit are all co-writes. It is only in writing this piece that it occurred to me that Shawn hasn’t produced an album of her own new songs since 2013’s All Fall Down.
There is also an online only album – The Starlighter – released in 2018. Essentially, it is a collection of lullabies. I guess it is for adults but for me I think it’s a children’s album.
I last saw her perform in 2023 at The Union Chapel in London. There were no new songs introduced. In today’s world where it’s extremely difficult to make any money out of recordings, has Shawn decided to rest on the laurels of her back catalogue?
I’d like to think the creative spark is still there and maybe we can hope for a crowdfunded project that will result in new songs from a very talented songwriter.
Or maybe we will have to simply enjoy what she’s already recorded.
Diamond In The Rough: A Memoir by Shawn Colvin
Carl Parker originated in Chester but has lived in north London since 1981. He’s unusual in these times in not subscribing to any social media, but contributes to sites like The Afterword and used to contribute to No Depression before it turned into an elitist institution. He’s recently retired and enjoys a relaxed life, where listening to new music is a recurring pleasure.
TopperPost #1,162
Air Supply
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