Sheryl Crow and UFOs

Any Sheryl Crow fans out there? If so, you no-doubt love her big breakthrough record, unoriginally called Sheryl Crow. A few years ago, I noticed something very strange about that record. First, there's a song called "Redemption Day" that contains these lyrics:

There is a train that's heading straight

To heaven's gate, to heaven's gate
And on the way, child and man,
And woman wait, watch and wait
For redemption day.

OK, nothing particularly strange about that. But there's another song on the same record ("Maybe Angels") that's all about waiting for aliens to come rescue the character who is singing: "I swear they're out there ... My bag's all packed in case they ever come for me ... I'm heading down to Roswell to wait and see..."

So we've got a song about someone who thinks aliens are coming to take her away and another song that repeats the phrase "heaven's gate" over and over in reference to "redemption day."

Maybe some of you reading this have already made the connection to the cult that went by the name Heaven's Gate, who thought an alien ship was hidden just behind the Hale-Bopp comet. The leader of the sect, Marshall Applewhite, had convinced his followers that the alien ship was coming to take them away. In March of 1997, thirty-eight members of the group, including Applewhite, committed suicide, believing they'd reached their own redemption day -- all of them wearing arm patches that said "Heaven's Gate Away Team."

But Crow's album was released in September of 1996, six months before any of this happened, which means she was writing these songs a year or more before the sect received any media attention.

If any readers can offer a reasonable explanation for this, I'd love to hear it. Sheryl, do you read Huffington Post?

 

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Comments

[Kendall C Gray]

07:56 PM on 06/19/2010

So. Coincidence followed by supposition equals insinuation? How about Crow- a musician- was referencing the live album "Heaven's Gate" by the British band UFO. It fits your evidence, just as well if not better, I think. Reasonable explanation... I'm sorry, but a reasonable explanation is that Crow and Applewhite shared a phrase and a common idea- that of helpful alien visitors. Not that Sheryl Crow was for some reason dropping coded references to Applewhite's group in her music. It's not impossible, I grant you, but of all the reasonable, logical, probable explanations, it would seem far less likely than what good old fashioned common sense should tell us. Which is... not every connection matters.

[cheesypoofs]

07:38 AM on 06/19/2010

Crow's "Redemption Day" is a "politicized song about national redemption. Cash's cover transformed it into a tune about personal redemption."
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=18614

"Sheryl Crow was interviewed for the October 5, 1996 issue of New Musical Express in which the song "Maybe Angels" is described as "an extraterrestrial yarn that finds Kurt Cobain joining John Lennon in heaven's winged choir". Lennon was murdered in December 1980; the deeply troubled Cobain committed suicide in April 1994. This might lead one to believe "Maybe Angels" is a somewhat morbid song, but nothing could be further from the truth."
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=16353

[ReaderTeacherCitizen]

10:40 AM on 06/18/2010

There's also a film called "Heaven's Gate," and the entrance to heaven is often referred to as a gate (pearly gates). If she had mentioned Hale-Bopp, you might have a case. But just barely. Otherwise, she is just one of the many people who reference angels and think aliens crashed at Roswell--or maybe she just thinks that aliens at Roswell would make a good song. Do you that someone who writes science fiction BELIEVES what they write is real? That's what your post ampunts to. Or else you were a guy who listens to Beatles albums for proof that Sir Paul is dead. That would make you the kooky one.

[Conk]

09:37 AM on 06/18/2010

Alien disclosure is taking place all over the world. Take notice.

[TequilaMockingbird]

12:25 PM on 06/18/2010

oooh Any good Links to share?

[Usama]

07:48 AM on 06/18/2010

Are we to believe that Crow was a discipline of the Heaven's Gate cult simply because she uses the term? Its part of Abrahamic tradition and like you say, is normal.

As for aliens, are her lyrics of aliens and Roswell a parody, a character's thoughts? Or the lyricists personal views?


I wouldnt read too much into those lyrics. Aliens are part of the American psyche. It used to be Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed.

[starrynights]

01:30 AM on 06/18/2010

This article was published in Psychology Today in the July 2008 edition. Why rehash it here?