I’m always struck by how obliquely I’ve become familiar with popular music, and not just because I usually identify Beatles songs by the covers of them I’m familiar with. Case in point is Sheryl Crow’s current single, a cover of Rod Stewart’s cover of a Cat Stevens song, which she released as one of the obligatory new tracks on her greatest hits album.

I was singing along to it the first time I heard it, wondering how I knew the lyrics, and it came to me. I’d heard the chorus sung acapella when Terence Trent D’arby performed "If You Let Me Stay" on the Grammies in 1988. He stopped the song twice, each time singing lyrics to a different song. Once, it was the lyrics to his own "Wishing Well&quot, which I knew well enough at the time. The other time, it was the chorus to "The First Cut is the Deepest". And that’s why Sheryl Crow reminds me of Terence Trent D’Arby. The end.