LOS ANGELES — Jean Smart just pulled her car over to the side of the road. She needed a moment. Whitney Houston's soaring power ballad "I Have Nothing" is playing on KOST-FM ("love songs on the Cooooast "), a song that ranks as Smart's "all-time singalong if you want to cry," and she had to call and tell me this because a couple of days earlier we had been talking about singing in cars, which she loves to do — always to what's on the radio, because "then the song catches you by surprise and it's more intense."
The day before, it was Pat Benatar's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot," a rocker about self-confidence that could easily double as an anthem for Deborah Vance, the legendary stand-up comedian Smart plays on "Hacks." Tomorrow it could be Dusty Springfield's "I Only Want to Be With You" ("Dusty Springfield always makes me so very happy and definitely inspires a high-decibel singalong") or maybe Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" or "Cold Heart," the Elton John and Dua Lipa mash-up, or anything by Hall & Oates ("oh, my God!"), but right now, it's Whitney.
"You have to put that on right now, and you have to crank it!" Smart tells me. "And then you have to let me know ... if you don't cry, you have no heart. I'm sorry."
