Make It Go Away (Radiation Song)

Album: Detours (2008)
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Songfacts®:

  • This portrait of a woman having radiation therapy touches on Sheryl Crow's own experiences with her treatment for breast cancer. Crow was diagnosed in February 2006, soon after her breakup with high-profile cancer survivor Lance Armstrong. She underwent surgery and 33 sessions of radiation therapy over two months. The treatment was a complete success; the cancer was caught before it spread.
  • With this song, Crow was confronting her challenges head-on. "I made an oath that I wouldn't bury the experience," she told People in 2023. "I'd sit with it and really work my way through it. I hold myself up to the standard of being a really good person, so to find myself lying on a radiation table facing my mortality, there are a lot of questions that go along with that: What did I do wrong? Why do I deserve this? This song felt like a moment of closing the book on that chapter."

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