All I Wanna Do

"All I Wanna Do" is a song performed by American singer and songwriter Sheryl Crow. It was written by Crow, David Baerwald, Bill Bottrell, and Kevin Gilbert, with lyrics adapted from Wyn Cooper's 1987 poem "Fun". Released in July 1994 by A&M, it was Crow's breakthrough hit from her 1993 debut album, Tuesday Night Music Club. The song is Crow's biggest US hit, peaking at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 for six consecutive weeks from October 8 to November 12, 1994, and it also topped the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. It was the winner of the 1995 Grammy for Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and was nominated for Song of the Year. In addition to its US success, "All I Wanna Do" peaked at number one in Australia for one week and in Canada for four weeks, also topping the RPM Adult Contemporary Tracks chart in the latter country. In New Zealand and the United Kingdom, it peaked at number four, and in Europe, it reached the top 10 in Austria, Flanders, France, Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands. The accompanying music video was directed by David Hogan and Roman Coppola. Crow performed the song on her live album Sheryl Crow and Friends: Live from Central Park. Background and structure The lyrics of the song are based on the poem "Fun" by Wyn Cooper. Cooper was inspired to write the poem by a conversation at a bar with a friend and occasional writer, Bill Ripley, in which he said "All I want is to have a little fun before I die", which became the first line of the poem. In a 1994 interview, Cooper said: "The poem isn't really about him. Or me. They're different people. They're people you can sort of see as ... well ... objective correlatives. Symbols of people like us, or what we could have been, or what we would have become if we continued to drink and do nothing with our lives." Toad Hall Studio, where the song was recorded, was next door to the Pasadena Playhouse. Crow's producer (Bottrell) discovered Cooper's poetry book The Country of Here Below in a nearby used bookstore in Pasadena, California. Crow had written a song called "I Still Love You" but was unhappy with its lyrics; she used its melody and adapted the poem for her lyrics to "All I Wanna Do".