Sheryl Crow 'Wildflower' album

"I wanted to reveal more of myself on this record," says Sheryl Crow, "and I didn’t have any trepidation about doing that. At this point in my life, I really wanted to make a record that wasn’t concerned with having singles, that felt mature and asked the questions that a 40 year old would ask."

From the opening notes of the yearning "I Know Why," it’s immediately evident that Wildflower—Crow’s first new full-length release in three years—is a dramatic new direction for the nine-time Grammy winner. The Missouri-born singer-songwriter is celebrated as one of our last true rock stars, and there was every reason to believe that her blossoming relationship with one of the world’s greatest athletes would result in more light-hearted, uptempo hits like "Soak Up the Sun" and "All I Wanna Do." Instead, though, the new album is a collection of intimate, introspective compositions, heavy on string arrangements rather than guitar solos.

Crow says that the success of her 2003 Very Best of Sheryl Crow album (which included her smash version of Cat Stevens’s "The First Cut is the Deepest") paved the way for Wildflower. "That gave me a great opportunity to step back say, OK, what do I want to do next? The Best Of was really the end of a chapter in my artistic life, and this is like my first record."

Since exploding onto the global pop stage in 1993 with the multi-platinum Tuesday Night Music Club album, the one-time music teacher and studio vocalist has continued working at a breakneck pace. The release of each new album led immediately to the road, and rare time off was filled with collaborations with everyone from the Rolling Stones to Kid Rock to Willie Nelson. After an extensive tour that followed the Best Of album, Crow made the decision to pull herself out of the fast lane and regroup. "I gave myself the gift of time off to reflect," she says, "to observe life for a little bit, and to get recommitted to the idea of collecting stories and living life before I sat down to write." She packed her bags—and some guitars and a tape recorder—and went to Spain.

"Leaving home, being in a place that was unfamiliar, a country where I don’t speak the language, being alone a lot and observing the chaos of the world—all that stuff informed what the record became," she says. "There’s a song about what’s happening in the religious movements in the world, asking questions about who God is. Or I’d watch the news in Europe and I’d see the way Americans are portrayed. All that began to seep into the flavor of the record, and it became sort of a little book of questions and observations."

From the confessional "Lifetimes" to the challenging "Letter to God," Crow’s writing explores brave new territory. Her last album, C’Mon C’Mon, was a deliberate evocation of classic ‘60s and ‘70s rock; Wildflower pursues a very different sound, but returns to some of the values that the best music of that era expressed. "The title song and ‘Where Has All the Love Gone’ are, for me, the cornerstones of this record," says Crow. "They both speak to the idea that we have power, and we have to find the innocence in ourselves, and the strength to be awake. I think in many ways, there’s been an incredible movement in everything from music to politics toward going to sleep."

The album was produced by Crow’s frequent associates Jeff Shanks and John Trott ("I didn’t want to produce myself—it’s too much work!"), and she reports that it was by far the most pleasant recording experience of her career. "C’Mon C’Mon was a difficult record for me to make," she says. "I was turning 40, music was changing, it was all Britney and Christina and lots of beats, and I was really struggling with how to stay relevant. So I knew I didn’t want to have that experience again."

Working closely with her producers and string arranger David Campbell, Crow brought a new approach to the Wildflower sessions. Instead of her usual method of writing in the studio, she arrived with songs more or less complete and ready to go. "I went in and recorded three or four songs, and then took a month and didn’t think about it," she says. "And then I’d have some more songs and go in and record those. And the next thing I knew, the album was done. Most of my records, it’s been hair-pulling and gnashing of teeth and tears and midnight phone calls to the therapist. This wasn’t even remotely like that—the whole record went smoothly and without conflict."

Whenever Crow begins a new album, she says, she uses a handful of albums as a "template" to help define the project. Her choices this time around are telling. She looked to Neil Young’s Harvest for its sense of intimacy, and to Elton John’s Tumbleweed Connection, for its "down-homeness." The other classic she referenced was All Things Must Pass by George Harrison—to whom Crow also paid tribute on her "Light In Your Eyes" single. "His passing affected me deeply, and really seemed to inform my art," she says. "I only met him once, but in the last three years, I’ve really intensely embraced meditating. I have a real admiration for the way he lived his life, and also for the way he kind of orchestrated his passing. He was so conscious of how fleeting life is, and he lived his life that way." Echoes of Harrison’s signature slide guitar and beloved Indian instrumentation can be heard on Wildflower tracks like "Chances Are" and the first single, "Good is Good."

Of course, there’s another shadow presence on this album, and that’s the very famous man in Crow’s life, Lance Armstrong. "Lance was kind of my sounding board," she says, "and it’s the first time I’ve experienced that in a relationship. It really made it fun to be home just writing songs, it felt extremely organic." Wildflower is being released just a few months after Armstrong’s historic seventh consecutive victory in the Tour de France—and the timing is no accident.

"The record’s been done since February," says Crow, "but we sat down and made the decision to put it out in September so that I could be there for the race—because I really wanted to be there, it’s the end of a big career for him. I embraced not just a person, but a whole life that for two years was about accomplishing this mission. So I didn’t want to be wishing I was in two places at once while this record was out, because this record means a lot to me."

The release of Wildflower will be followed by a tour that’s reflective of the album’s mood. "We’re going to do a handful of dates with the band and a string section," says Crow. "We’ll do the album in its entirety, and then we’ll come back and do the familiar, bigger songs with strings. It’s gonna be an evening of music, not a big rock show—more intimate, more theatrical, and for me, a nice departure from going out in a pair of leather jeans to rock the house."

The tone of Wildflower may be bittersweet, but Sheryl Crow’s feelings about her new album are pure bliss. "It’s the only record I’ve ever made where when the album was finished, I didn’t go back and say "we need this" or "we need that,’" she says. "I stand behind all my work, but my other records I love as redheaded stepchildren—because by the time you’ve finished them, you have so many different relationships to the experience of recording them. But this one, I can just listen to it and feel proud of the leap that I’ve made as a songwriter."

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Sheryl Crow - Wildflower