(Like most everyone, I always thought Shawn Colvin was a guy.) *Bruce Springsteen was a huge fan of her music, claiming in 1995: "In the world of McMusic, Shawn Colvin is the only artist-either male or female-I listen to on a regular basis." Wise words from The Boss.īut Shawn Colvin has won some Grammys, and even a lot of my male friends listen to her music. The fact alone that she was during a time when vinyl was stopped being manufactured and CDs and cassettes were the only things being made at that time. She still continues to make music (her most recent album was in 2016,) and her Columbia back catalogue was recently remastered on compact disc and vinyl by Legacy Recordings. She got a lot of airplay on college radio in the Nineties, but after Sunny Came Home came out, she fell off the map. I understand why she put the male pronouns in, though. I never really cared much for her cover of Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic by The Police. She also was a backup singer for Mary Chapin Carpenter and performed at the Lilith Fair. Her voice is arguably as melodic as Joni Mitchell, with the country elements of The Band and a Grateful Dead reference here and there. I found the CDs of Fat City, Steady On and A Few Small Repairs at a Value Village thrift store recently. Lyrically, it is a very dark song, but I love the mandolin melody that plays throughout.
(I take that back, Bonnie Raitt was 40 when she put out Nick Of Time, and Sheryl Crow was 31 when her first record was made.) Most of the acts that were part of the New Wave of Female Singer-Songwriters in the Nineties were all in their 20s. I think one reason why Shawn Colvin is underappreciated is partly because she was 33 when she put out her first album, Steady On, in 1989. A friend of mine even mentioned to me that he discovered the music of Tom Waits through Shawn Colvin. I always loved her work with Suzanne Vega, and she has a very nice contralto voice. It was a really great video, and I suggest you look it up just to mark my words. (Then again, I was born in 2001, so artists like Shawn Colvin, Shania Twain, Roseanne Cash, Aimee Mann, Jewel and Michelle Branch were the female artists I grew up listening to.) I saw a video of Shawn Colvin performing The Boxer with Allison Krauss in 2007 with Jerry Douglas on Dobro.
(The song where a woman is tired of being abused by her husband, so she burns his house down as a revenge act.) Shawn Colvin has always been one of my favorite female acts. Shawn Colvin was the woman that wrote the song Sunny Came Home. Not sure if any of you know about Shawn Colvin, but she was a very well known folk rock singer-songwriter in the Nineties.