Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Wants to do more than just have some fun
From Grammy awards to multi-platinum albums—Sheryl Crow has achieved them all. Since her 1993 debut, she's become one of the few female performers to earn a regular place in the charts, now she's turning to new media to promote her forthcoming album Detours. She took time out for a controversial chat with ARTISTdirect about personal challenges and political convictions.
This is your sixth studio release. What was driving you creatively this time around?
Well, that’s a three-hour conversation! The title is "Detours," and the idea behind that is I think that we—as people, but also as a as a social movement—we go on all these detours that take us away from who we really are. It’s really in the last six years, watching where we’ve gone as a nation until we are now perceived in the world as being out of touch. So, the album is politically driven, but it’s also personally driven. The detours that my life has taken over the last three years have brought me back to a place where I can remember who it is that I am and what I want to feel. Whether it’s having breast cancer, whether it’s having adopted my son—all of these things are defining and refining moments.
And you teamed up again with Bill Bottrell, who produced Tuesday Night Music Club?
Yes. This has actually been the most exciting record I’ve made since 1993, because I worked with Bill again. Both our lives have taken extreme journeys, so coming back together was really a sweet experience—an inspired experience. Where it’s rocking, it’s rocking, and where it’s truthful, it’s very intimate. It’s fully committed to whatever genre the song is written in, the lyrics are very honest. Having Wyatt in my life now really made me unable to edit myself—there was a real sense of urgency. It’s very, very forthright.
And I suppose all of those new experiences have given you new perspectives to bring to your song-writing.
Absolutely. I feel like it’s a very compelling time to be an artist. Because we’re seeing such a switch to people not feeling like they need to pay for music—or movies or art, whatever’s available on the internet—it’s even more compelling to write the truth and go out so people will find it, because it’s not going to get played on the radio. Nobody’s really out there talking about what’s going on. I feel there’s a great need for this conversation—the kind of conversation that’s going on with me and my friends.
The switch you talk about away from traditional venues for music exposure and towards downloading—how has that been affecting your career?
Well, the reason we’re promoting this now is that it is like the Wild West out there. It’s not the old days where you’d put a single out and if people liked it, they bought the record. Now, it’s a completely different road that you take, and I’m really excited about the fact that we’re not even leaking these songs, we’re just putting them out there for people to hear before the record comes out next year. There are four songs going out with videos on YouTube and it’s a great way for people to hear what the record’s about. And along with that, I feel like there’s a great dialogue to be had because hopefully these songs are thought-provoking.
You’re career has spanned such a period of change in the industry. As an artist, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced?
It is completely different. For one thing, anyone can make a record now. If you have a computer and ProTools, you can do it at home without the cost, and anyone can make a video and stick it on YouTube and six million people may see it. And that’s compounded by the fact you can download a record and not pay for it, so it’s harder for people who are trying to make a living. It’s tricky. There’s got to be a way for us to make our living as songwriters.
And that’s probably when touring and merchandise becomes so important…
Right, and touring is another issue as I get older. I have a little boy now, so there are all these things that will weigh. It’s always been different for the women I’ve talked to in the industry. Chrissie Hynde was so helpful to me when we talked about touring. It’s like you have your children, and then as a mom you stay home and raise them. Or, as a male rock star, you have your kids and then the mom stays home while you tour. I think that freedom gives them longevity in a way women don’t have.
So would you say that being a woman has presented extra challenges in your career?
I’ve never really thought about it in terms of male or female, I just know that as music is changing towards being an entertainment-orientated medium, I think it’s an even more compelling time to be an artist. We’ve got a war going on that nobody talks about—but there’s no demonstrating, or picketing. I think we’re just emotionally detached, and maybe that comes from having so much information from the internet, and 24-hour cable TV. We’ve gone to sleep. In my mind, there are people out there who want to hear lyrics that echo their concerns, and as we see the world changing, it would almost be ridiculous to have music that doesn’t relate. I think we’re going to see a shift—well, I’m hoping we’re going to see a shift towards that.
So have you personally become involved with any issues? I know that environmentalism has always been close to your heart.
Last Spring I went on the road with Laurie David (producer of An Inconvenient Truth) on a bio-diesel bus and went to college campuses. We talked about what they can do in their personal lives, and in future workplaces in an effort to go green. It was an interesting tour because the young people are very concerned, and feeling really ripped off by the state of the planet they’ve inherited. At the same time, there’s incredible ingenuity coming up with ways to live a green lifestyle. The campaign of fear we’ve been living through for the last seven years can make people feel powerless, and there’s so much misinformation out there. It’s easier just to tune out and get on with our shopping.
You seem optimistic that artists can start the debate, and contribute politically…
It’s such a strange and indefinable time right now for artists. You finish your record and then you have no idea what’s going to happen so far as people downloading or viewing. But for me on this record, it wasn’t so much about making a living as it being heard. Hopefully it is addressing what a lot of people are saying.
—Abby McDonald
12.17.07
Friday, December 14, 2007
Sheryl Crow to headline 'CNN Heroes' tribute
(CNN) -- Mary J. Blige, Sheryl Crow, Wyclef Jean and Norah Jones join CNN for a live global telecast honoring ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
Singer/songwriter Sheryl Crow will preview her 2008 album
"CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute," hosted by CNN's Anderson Cooper and Christiane Amanpour, honors the most outstanding viewer-nominated CNN Heroes as chosen by a blue ribbon panel of world leaders and luminaries.
The December 6 gala at the American Museum of Natural History in New York is the culmination of a five-month audience nomination process to recognize some of the people among us who see a world of possibility and hope.
The show will include performances from Grammy Award winners Blige and Crow and a duet by Grammy Award winner Jones and acclaimed performer-producer Jean.
The CNN Heroes:
• Eighteen viewer-nominated CNN Heroes finalists selected from more than 7,000 names submitted by viewers in 80 countries.
• Viewers' Choice: The most popular CNN Hero profiled on air and online between May 1 and September 30, as chosen in a poll conducted on CNN.com.
• Everyday Superheroes: Three remarkable people recognized by CNN for their spontaneous acts of courage in the face of danger: Wesley Autrey, who jumped onto New York subway tracks to save the life of a student; Zach Petkewicz, who helped prevent a shooter from killing a classroom of students at Virginia Tech; and John Smeaton, a baggage handler who thwarted a terrorist attack at Glasgow Airport in Scotland.
The performers:
• Mary J. Blige: Grammy-winning "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul" will give her first live performance of a song from her forthcoming new album "Growing Pains."
• Sheryl Crow: Singer/songwriter previews her 2008 album "Detours" with a live performance of one of her new songs.
• Wyclef Jean and Norah Jones: Duet and first-ever live performance of a new track from Jean's new album, "Carnival II: Memoirs of an Immigrant," to be released December 4.
The presenters:
• Tyra Banks: Supermodel, actor and host of the daytime talk show, "The Tyra Banks Show."
• Harry Connick Jr.: Musician, singer and actor, heavily involved in efforts to rebuild his hometown of New Orleans, Louisiana, after Hurricane Katrina.
• Glenn Close: Academy Award nominee and star of the hit TV series "Damages."
• Rosario Dawson: Activist, actress, and star of this year's cult hit "Grindhouse."
• LL Cool J: Hip-hop legend, TV and movie star, expected to release a new album early in 2008.
• Kyra Sedgwick: Emmy-nominated and Golden Globe-winning star of hit TV series "The Closer."
• Jimmy Smits: Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor and star of the CBS drama "Cane."
Peabody winner producing gala
Joel Gallen, who has helmed ambitious telethon events supporting victims of both the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina, serves as executive producer for the December 6 event.
Gallen won a Peabody Award for "America: A Tribute to Heroes" and has been nominated for several Emmy awards throughout his career.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Detours Videos
Sheryl Crow has plenty to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. In the last year, the nine-time Grammy winne, became a mother to adopted son Wyatt, traveled the country on a Stop Global Warming college tour, got up in Karl Rove's grill, and oh yes, finished a new album to be released next February. Crow took a break from mixing to chat about her new single "Shine Over Babylon", her Thanksgiving plans, and how we, as a nation, need to wake up.
What are you up to for Thanksgiving? I am heading home to Kennett, Missouri, where my whole family is, and I'm sure we're going to overeat. Thanksgiving is actually my favorite holiday; it's so relaxing. There's no hustle and bustle like the Christmas gift bloat, and then I'm heading to New York to do press for this album.
Why did you choose "Shine Over Babylon" as your first single? Actually, this isn't technically the first single. The record business has changed so drastically -- it's like the Wild West out here -- that the game plan was to get out as much music before the album came out as possible, so people could hear it. This was the first one that I felt should come out because it really speaks to the tone of the record and for me, it has a lot of impact as to what's going on right now. We're going to follow it with three more songs with video on YouTube in the upcoming week.
YouTube, huh? Do people even bother with television now? As far as I know, MTV and VH1 don't play music videos any more; it's all reality TV and game shows, so I don't know if they'll really pick up a video. To me, it's an interesting time because you used to make a video for a million dollars with a great director. Now, you spend $10,000, if that, with no hair and make-up, and do it completely guerrilla style. For example, we did a song called "God Bless This Mess" about the war and we shot it in front of the White House and nobody stopped us. It's really really exciting to just go out and shoot, like how Bob Dylan shot "Don't Look Back" -- it's just a guy with a camera and you're performing the song.
Did no one care you were recording in front of the White House? It was almost like I was shape-shifting, honest to god. I couldn't get arrested doing this video. I was even trying -- I mean, is anyone even noticing that I'm singing subversive lyrics right in front of the White House? Goes to show you.
"Shine Over Babylon" isn't necessarily as controversial, but it's certainly eco-conscious. Even though it may sound like an apocalyptic diatribe, I hope people will find a certain modicum of hope in it. It's really more of a battle cry than about being disillusioned.
What issues work you up the most? The last three years have been very impactful for me, particularly when it comes to politics. Really, even the last six years. My album is called "Detours," and I come back to that theme all the time, because personally... [Crow shifts voices] Hi big boy, my smiley bug, my son just got up... Anyway, I always think of detours as some path that you take away from yourself before it eventually brings you back to remembering who you are. For the last six years, we've been sent on the most massive detour based on fear and misinformation, and we have to really look at our selves in this moment in time -- and it's directly correlated to our lack of passion and our propensity to fall asleep in the face of misinformation -- and just figure out who we are. Personally, the detours I've been on relationship-wise and with my breast cancer, have helped define who I am and who I'm going to be.
I can imagine motherhood is also a transformative experience. I'll tell you -- not to sound like a Hallmark card, but just having him around has rendered my heart completely open and fearless. [When writing the album,] I don't remember exercising my overactive ability to edit myself at all, and I feel an urgency for the truth to prevail. It doesn't matter if [my] lyrics are biting or going piss people off -- I have to write what I'm feeling right now because I have this little guy who's looking at me, and asking the question, "What kind of world is awaiting me?" and that was really what propelled my record.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Sheryl Crow: 'The Best I've Felt in Years'
The Singer-Songwriter Talks About What She's Learned Over a Rough Year
Sheryl Crow told ABC News' Diane Sawyer about how she beat breast cancer and heartbreak and came out stronger.Sheryl Crow is one of those celebrities who seem much the same onstage and off.Many fans see the rocker from Kennett, Miss., as a down-to-earth girlfriend who's easy to relate to.
Many more women can relate to the 44-year-old now that she's a breast cancer survivor.
Crow told Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview with "Good Morning America" that she's fully recovered and feeling great. "I actually feel the best I've felt in years," she said.
Crow was diagnosed with cancer in her left breast in February. It was a total surprise. She isn't a smoker and doesn't have a history of breast cancer in her family.
Luckily, the cancer hadn't spread to her lymph nodes. The singer underwent a lumpectomy and a course of radiation that wiped out the cancer.
"Radiation was all that was required. It was seven weeks, five days a week, and not kind of a long process. You'd go in -- and literally eight [minutes] or 10 minutes long," Crow said.
"But over a course of seven weeks, you become fatigued and the breast becomes tougher and more painful and looks sunburned. And mostly what I experienced was fatigue".
Friends, Fish and 'American Idol'
In many ways, Crow was lucky. Weeks before, she and her boyfriend of two years, cyclist Lance Armstrong, had announced their separation.
"I was tired a lot," she said. "And also I was going through, you know, obviously, the trauma that I was going through before I was diagnosed. And so, all of it culminated at the same time and really forced me to just work my way through all of it."
Crow said she talked to Dana Reeve, who died of lung cancer in March, and she told her the only way to go through grief was to grieve.
"And so. … That's just kind of what I did. I mean, I just sat with it and just worked my way through it."
She meditated and changed her diet.
"I kind of went into a full-on Eskimo diet, where I ate a lot of salmon. In fact, I'm salmoned out of my brains, but just really eating a lot of omega-six, instead of omega-three, and really green vegetables, just eating really clean, organic food. … Listen, I haven't had a doughnut in I can't remember when."
Crow surrounded herself with her parents; a group of women, including Courtney Cox, Laura Dern and Jennifer Aniston; and others."I had this incredible tribe of women just descend upon me and carry me through the whole experience on their backs," she said. "And also my family took shifts coming out."
For the first time in a long time, she sat around and watched TV, including "American Idol."
"You know, I was rooting for Elliott [Yamin] the whole way," she said, with a laugh. "I'm still mad as a hornet he didn't win."
Wants Kids Soon
Her first concert back a few weeks ago was not just a performance for her old fans.
"I have so many people walk up to me who are just so much younger than me that say, 'I survived breast cancer' or 'I'm battling breast cancer, and it's all around us,'" Crow said.
She tells other women to be vigilant about getting mammograms and self-examinations.
"It's all about early detection, to find out what your family history is, because if you are 26 and you have it in your family, it will matter, so get a base-line mammogram and just follow it every year," she said.
What might this rock star, celebrity and survivor say to the Sheryl Crow just starting out, before the hit records and high-profile relationship?
"Try to at least address my fears and not be overcome by that," she said. "[The] fear of things not always working out. You come to a point in your life where you realize it's not my job to prove to my parents or to my record label or to the world or to my lover that I matter. The fact is is that you matter."
"It's not a good place to be concerned with always being right with everybody, always pleasing people, because ultimately you wind up betraying yourself a lot."
As for the future, Crow said she was looking forward to having kids at some point, finding a strong relationship, and continuing to make music.
"I do think I'll have kids. [Whether] … I adopt or whether it's my own, I really have a strong feeling that I will. And I think it will [be] sooner than later," she said. "And the idea of marriage, I love that idea. But I think what I love more is just being with somebody who really creates space for you and gets you."
Crow said she wanted to hang on to her newfound wisdom.
"I think I'm like all new cancer survivors," she said. "You fear that this heightened awareness is going to go away and that you're going to forget everything and you're just going to go back to the loser you were before or whatever, you know."
"And what I've realized is that all these experiences are deepening experiences. And they are -- they are the moments where obstacles are removed and opportunities come in."
Stop Global Warming
Sheryl Crow Clears Air About Toilet Paper Comment
Rocker Sheryl Crow says joke was meant to draw attention to global warming.
It all started with a joke.
Wrapping up a nationwide global warming tour, singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow posted a quirky "solution" online about a new way to save the environment.
She wrote: "I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting."
She told the joke to get people's attention, and it worked. Talk show hosts had a field day with Crow's comments.
"Have you seen my [backside]?" Rosie O'Donnell joked on "The View."
"It seemed like Sheryl was trying to be a little bit cheeky, no pun intended," said Michelle Lee, executive editor of In Touch weekly.
Maybe Crow was inspired by her ecoactivist partner Laurie David. After all, David's husband, Larry David, of "Seinfeld" fame, wrote the famous episode where Elaine says to a neighbor in the next bathroom stall:
"Three squares? You can't spare three squares?"
"No, I don't have a square to spare. I can't spare a square," the woman responds.
Meeting Karl Rove
Crow wanted to clear the air about her comments.
"We're just so happy that people are talking about global warming, even if it's brought on by a joke," Crow told ABC News.
And for Crow and Laurie David, their message is everything.
They just wrapped up a successful cross-country ecotour of 12 college campuses to raise awareness about global warming.
The two started the trip in an environmentally friendly biodiesel bus at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and ended the tour on Earth Day at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
At George Washington, they joined musicians Faith Hill, Tim McGraw and Carole King and environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who performed and spoke before a crowd of about 2,000 people.
Crow and David also talked with top White House adviser Karl Rove at the White House Correspondents Dinner Saturday night.
"How excited were we to have our first opportunity ever to talk directly to the Bush administration about global warming," Crow and David wrote on the Huffington Post blog.
"Much to our dismay, he immediately got combative," they said, "and it went downhill from there."
"We're definitely gonna be back," David said. "We haven't finished. This is something that's gonna be around for a long time."
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Shine Over Babylon, Gasoline and Lyrics
Sheryl Crow has successfully navigated around some serious detours over the past two years, and she has the record to prove it. Interscope has announced that the nine-time Grammy winner's new album, Detours, is due out Feb. 5 "This is the most honest record I've ever made. It's about being forced to wake up," Crow, 45, said in a statement. Crow says the album is "very inspired by the last three years of events in my life," a period that, among other things, saw her engaged to and broken up from Lance Armstrong, wage a successful battle against breast cancer and adopt a child. This will be her first collection of new material since 2005's Wildflower and it reteams her with Bill Bottrell, who produced her breakthrough album, Tuesday Night Music Club. "When Bill and I got together again to work on this record," Crow wrote on her blog, "it was such a cathartic and comforting moment." In March 2006, just a month after Crow and Armstrong split, the singer was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent successful surgery and made a full recovery. This past May, Crow announced that she had become a single mom, adopting a baby boy she named Wyatt, after her father. Meanwhile, Crow endured a professional setback when she was forced to scrap the inaugural GirlFrenzy festival. The one-day event, masterminded by Crow, Avril Lavigne and Fiona Apple, was to include an all-female lineup and take place in Irvine, California. No reason was given for the postponement, but organizers said they hoped to reschedule for 2008. Recorded at Crow's Nashville farm, Detours will feature "14 or 15" tracks, including the lead single, Shine Over Babylon (currently available on iTunes) and "Lullaby for Wyatt," dedicated to her son and also showcased in the John Cusack film Grace Is Gone. Other cuts include "Love Is Free," "Peace Be Upon Us" and "God Bless This Mess." Crow will debut some of her new material during upcoming TV appearances. She is slated to perform Dec. 6 on CNN's Heroes and Dec. 21 on CBS' A Home for the Holidays.
SHERYL CROW | SHINE OVER BABYLON
The song is from her album ‘Detours’, which doesn’t come out until February 2008.
“Shine Over Babylon” is a brilliant song. Sheryl Crow is reunited with producer Bill Bottrell (‘Tuesday Night Music Club’) and the mix and the instrumentation on the track is great and it’s very well produced. The chorus is infectious, the verses are welcoming and the song as a whole gives me that feeling of wanting to “do something exciting” when I hear it. I like the way Sheryl is singing on the track - her slightly delayed or syncopated style phrasing along with the vocal effects are cool.
In a short video clip of Sheryl in the studio recording “Shine Over Babylon”, she says that the song was “inspired by what’s going on politically and what’s going on socially around all of us…an end of the world song, but with hope”.
Lyrics Shine Over Babylon
I walked the heat of seven hills
Endless talk of losing wills
Great highways in a constant melt
Men and women and children all have overbuilt
Buying bread and paying for none
Creatures of a waning sun
Teacher's hands are overrun
Clowns and gypsies have all but gone
You make me wanna
Shine over Babylon
You make me wanna
Shine over Babylon
Freedoms etched on Sacred pillars
Hollow stones of mindless filler
Can lead to madman oil drillers
Won't be long before we all are killers
Little boy lost way up the mountains
Cities drowning under boiling fountains
I dreamed of chilly, sunlit days
I was trembling in a golden haze
You make me wanna
Shine over Babylon
You make me wanna
Shine over Babylon
Celebrate the golden cow
Praise the bloated bank account
If there's a god where is he now
The precipice is slipping further out
Sanskrit message from the mounts
Leave your possession, hope abounds
There's nothing here for you to cry about
We're all just followers from here on out
I take the stage, I walk the planks
I sing these songs with little thanks
I wait for shouts from crazy cranks
I stand amidst the brown shirt ranks
I found my way to alexandria
Where gurus bubble up on gangea
Scavengers, they run up and hand ya
All the junk that should have damned ya
You make me wanna
Shine over Babylon
You make me wanna
Shine over Babylon
If everything in life was free
You'd float in your own reverie
The things that you could never see
seal the gap between you and me
You make me wanna
Shine over Babylon
You make me wanna
Shine over Babylon
Lyrics Gasoline
(Lyrics: Crow Music: Crow, Trott, Bottrell)
Way back in the year of 2017
The sun was growing hotter
And oil was way beyond its peak
When crazy Hector Johnson broke into a refinery
And the black gold started flowing
Just like Boston tea
It was the summer of the riots
And London sat in sweltering heat
And the gangs of Mini Coopers
Took the battle to the streets
But when the creed was handed down
For no more trucks and no more cars
They threw cans of petrol through the windows at Scotland Yard
Gasoline
Will be free, will be free
Gasoline
Will be free, will be free
When the Mounties stormed the palace of the Saudi family
They held them up for ransom
Without disturbing their high tea
But their getaway was shaky
They stalled in the Riyadh streets
Cause you can't make it very far
When your tank is on empty
The final can of gasoline was loaded on a truck
And driven through the streets of Agra to the palace aquaduct
You see, all the majesty of worship that once adorned these fatal halls
Was just a target to the angry
As they blew up the Taj Mahal
Gasoline
Will be free, will be free
Gasoline
will be free, will be free
Gary ran a market way down in Tennessee
Where all the farmers got together and talked about this great country
But when the government turned its back on farming
Man, what I hear
They dragged the pumps out of the ground
With a big vintage John Deere
I've got soldiers on my payroll
Standing guard on my front drive
Snipers on the roof poised at those
Who don't want me alive
Cause they audited my taxes
My family under threat
Cause I've got a message and a megaphone
And I'll scream it to the death
Gasoline
Will be free, will be free
Gasoline
Will be free, will be free
You got the farms in Argentina
Making fuel from sugar cane
You got the bastards in Washington
Afraid of popping the greed vain
Cause the money's in the pipeline
And pipeline's running dry
And we'll be the last to recognize
Where there’s shit there’s always flies
"Most Honest Record"
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