Are you watching the All Star game?

No? Me neither.

That said, and putting the lie to my previous comment, consider this: The reason people get to be backup singers is that a) they don't mind standing in the back while whomever they are backing up thrashes around for the cameras, and b) they have an extraordinarily wide range of vocal skills. As often as not a level of skill surpassing the designated thrasher behind whom they toil.

Then, every once in a while, the backup singers become stars themselves, usually for reasons related to how sexy they look with the camera halfway down their throat while they sing "All I want to do is have some fun before I die" but sometimes, amazingly, for reasons related to their actual ability to sing.

Are you watching the All Star game?

Me? No. But I did watch the National Anthem sung by Sheryl Crow and I am here to tell you, dear reader, that she's getting an A- for her effort. I mean, she just sang the freaking song without a ton of bullshit-which gets you, for starters, at least a B--and then--praise the Lord--she declined to give in to the urge to bump up an octave as she hit the final "Free" and "Brave."

Free--EEEEH! Yo--I mean we've all heard it.

Really, it was a pleasure not to. Almost can't remember the last time I didn't.

So today is now, officially, Sheryl Crow day.

Hit it:

Hit it!
(Didn't I just say that?--Ed.)
This ain't no disco
It ain't no country club either
This is LA!

"All I wanna do is have a little fun before I die,"
Says the man next to me out of nowhere
It's apropos
Of nothing
He says his name's William but I'm sure,
He's Bill or Billy or Mac or Buddy
And he's plain ugly to me
And I wonder if he's ever had a day of fun in his whole
life
We are drinking beer at noon on Tuesday
In a bar that faces a giant car wash
The good people of the world are washing their cars
On their lunch break, hosing and scrubbing
As best they can in skirts in suits

They drive their shiny Datsuns and Buicks
Back to the phone company, the record store too
Well, they're nothing like Billy and me, cause

[Chorus]
All I wanna do is have some fun
I got a feeling I'm not the only one
All I wanna do is have some fun
I got a feeling I'm not the only one
All I wanna do is have some fun
Until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard

I like a good beer buzz early in the morning
And Billy likes to peel the labels
From his bottles of Bud
He shreds them on the bar
Then he lights every match in an oversized pack
Letting each one burn down to his thick fingers
before blowing and cursing them out
And he's watching the bottles of Bud as they spin on
the floor

And a happy couple enters the bar
Dangerously close to one another
The bartender looks up from his want ads

Chorus

Otherwise the bar is ours,
The day and the night and the car wash too
The matches and the Buds and the clean and dirty
cars
The sun and the moon but

Chorus

She also gets additional props for correctly using "apropos" (a word frequently used interchangeably with "appropriate" by the same people who think it's okay to use "cliche" as an adverb) in Line 7.

God bless her. And America. And Eric Clapton, whom she dated.