“She’s Crazy For Leavin'”
Rodney Crowell
Written by Guy Clark and Rodney Crowell
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
January 21, 1989
Guy Clark was the first to record “She’s Crazy For Leavin’,” several years before co-writer Rodney Crowell cut it.
Clark’s version is great, and it’s good that Crowell waited until he was fully developed as a recording artist to tackle it himself. There aren’t a lot of great country songs with unreliable narrators. This is one of the best, as Crowell weaves the tale that the woman who is calm and collected while leaving him behind is crazy for doing so.
But whose actions are crazy here? Crowell disregards the warnings of the bus driver and all of the jeers from the honkeys at the bus stop and chases her in his truck, which he wraps around a tree in his failed pursuit. The jaws of life cut him out and he’s nursing a busted nose, but the girl on the bus? She’s the one out of control!
It takes a careful balance of self-deprecation and storytelling prowess to pull this off and make a lovable loser out of this guy. He’s still far from his peak in either area yet, but “She’s Crazy For Leavin'” was as good as or better than anything on the radio in 1989, and what was on the radio in 1989 was as good or better than any other year in country music history. Talk about meeting the moment!
“She’s Crazy For Leavin'” gets an A.
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…what a compound streak of no. 1 hits he and his wife produced between 1987 and 1990. most impressive and probably unmatched in the genre’s history. as for this one: he gave it the kiss of life and it worked. compared to the original.
Tim and Faith were bigger commercially and for longer, but Rodney and Rosanne certainly set a much higher bar for that than had ever been seen before, and the music they made while they were married is better than any other husband and wife I can think of. Even George and Tammy, if you only consider the music they made when they were married.
Another great one from Rodney and one of the better “lovable loser” stories to emerge from country radio in my lifetime. It’s interesting that you mention the “unreliable narrator” angle. It’s what I’ve always thought made this such an interesting record, but if you recall, it was also my take on Rodney’s previous hit “It’s Such a Small World”, where I thought both he and Rosanne were unreliable narrators, seeking each other out purposefully at familiar haunts and only pretending that it was mere chance to come upon each other. Whatever the case, detours such as truck chases and “bus stops full of honkeys” made for an exciting ride from Point A to Point B in this song’s trajectory, all driven by an addictive beat and tempo. Country music fans were fortunate for this window in time that allowed Rodney to emerge as a mainstream artist with considerable radio success, and thankfully there are a couple more big hits to go before he got lost in the early 90s shuffle.
Grade: A
I don’t understand why his fortunes faded at radio. It seemed to happen with a lot of his contemporaries that broke out around that time. His music certainly stayed excellent all the way through. “Things I Wish I’d Said” was a masterpiece and I think it stopped somewhere in the seventies on the chart.
“Talking to a Stranger” from his 1993 Greatest Hits CD was also a jam. I could have sworn that was released as a single but it doesn’t look like it according to Wikipedia. “Things I Wish I’d Said” topped at #72. He did have two more semi-hits from his third major album after that, but it was a very quiet lights-out after that.
I’m not sure how well the use of “honky” sits with me in this song.
Rodney had an amazing streak. Co-sign on “Things I Wish I’d Said” and personal favorite, “Earthbound”.
I’ve loved just about all of his singles except “The Obscenity Prayer” and “Sex & Gasoline”.
The creative frequency Crowell was vibrating at with these hits from “Diamonds & Dirt” was outrageous.
Lyle Lovett and Crowell has a real knack for self deprecating songwriting and singing, a real lost art form these days. This song might be the best example of that skill.
Guy Clark, however, deserves a little more celebration and recognition than he gets here as the co-writer of this hit.
And it turns out that digging into Guy Clark’s past turns up K.T. Oslin.
Clark was monstrously influential as a songwriting mentor to an entire generation of Texas singer-songwriters.
Clark came of age in Houston during the folk revival of the 1960s. He apparently formed a Weaver’s-type singing group which included a young K.T. Oslin, or at least was included on an album recorded at The Jester folk music club in 1964 in Houston, Texas It featured artists that regularly played the folk club. The 15 track album was exclusively sold out of the Jester club.
Oslin would later also sing harmony vocals with Clark on four of the songs from his eponymous 1978 album.
I would never have connected this Texan songwriting legend with that Arkansas-born New York icon.
It is insane that these two quintessentially non-conformist, outsider artists would find mainstream success at the top of Nashville’s charts in the late ’80s.
How magical is this period of country music history?
As John Anderson would later sing, “Somebody, slap me!”