My Favorite Mistake

"My Favorite Mistake" is the first single from Sheryl Crow's third studio album, The Globe Sessions (1998), released on August 31, 1998, through A&M Records. Crow wrote the song about a relationship with a man who proves to be unfaithful and is widely believed to have been written about Eric Clapton. Released in 1998, the single peaked at number 20 on the US Billboard Hot 100, becoming Crow's fifth top-20 single in the United States, while reaching number two in Canada and giving Crow her seventh top-five hit there. In the United Kingdom, it reached number nine, becoming her last top-10 single in Britain. Writing and recording The song was written by Sheryl Crow and her regular collaborator Jeff Trott. The song is about a philandering ex-boyfriend, rumored to be Eric Clapton. Crow, however, has refused to say who the song was about, telling Billboard Magazine on the release of her album, "Oh, there will be just so much speculation, and because of that there's great safety and protection in the fact that people will be guessing so many different people and I'm the only person who will ever really know. I'm really private about who I've had relationships with, and I don't talk about them in the press. I don't even really talk about them with the people around me." Crow compared "My Favorite Mistake" to "You're So Vain" by Carly Simon. However, she later claimed that she does not look at her relationship with Clapton as a mistake and verified that the song was not about him. As further corroboration, Crow introduces Clapton as "a really good friend of mine" in her 1999 performance in Central Park, later to be released as an album. The songs on The Globe Sessions including "My Favorite Mistake" were written in the first person as opposed the narrative songs featured on her first two albums. Crow was having so much difficulty with the honesty of the lyrics on the album that she was considering cancelling the release of the record in June 1998 and cancelled an appearance at Lilith Fair in the summer of that year. However, eventually the release of the album was deferred for six weeks while she recorded some new songs with a subsequent delay in the release of the leadoff single. The song was recorded at Globe Recording Studio in New York owned by Robert FitzSimons and Tracey Loggia.