2019-08-01_Red_UK

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August 2019 | REDONLINE.CO.UK

As she prepares to release her

final album, singer and songwriter

Sheryl Crow talks to Cyan Turan about

the songs that have defined her life

I

f It Makes You Happy, Every Day Is A Winding Road, All

I Wanna Do... amid the fizzy but forgettable nature of

much of modern music, Sheryl Crow’s songs live on in

the mind like old friends, part of the fabric of memory’s

infinite tapestry. Which is why, as she speaks to me over

the phone from her home in Nashville, I find myself saddened

when she tells me her next album, Threads, will be her last – a

response to the way listeners are increasingly streaming singles

rather than immersing themselves in whole albums.

‘I grew up loving albums, reading liner notes and poring

over album covers, but now it seems counterintuitive to

make a complete artistic statement knowing it’s going to be

cherry-picked,’ she reasons. Should she feel the urge to write

another song, she’ll release it as a standalone single.

At times during her three-decade musical career, Crow’s

headlines have hovered more closely around her personal life:

relationships with high-profile men including Owen Wilson

and Lance Armstrong, becoming a mother [Crow adopted her

sons Wyatt, 12, and Levi, nine, in 2007 and 2010 respectively],

surviving breast cancer and, latterly,

her open criticisms of Donald Trump.

But music is the thread that weaves,

unbreaking, through her life’s ups and

downs. The numbers are dizzying:

10 studio albums; 50m album sales

worldwide; nine wins from 32

Grammy nominations. Threads feels

like a fitting finale or, as 57-year-old Crow puts it, ‘a great album to go out on’. It is filled with collaborations

with ‘people I’ve loved since I was a young girl’, with the likes of Stevie Nicks (‘I loved her as a kid, got to

know her as a young artist, and now we’ve been friends for years’), Keith Richards (‘I wanted to be Keith more

than Mick!’) and Eric Clapton (‘For obvious reasons! We’ve been close through the years and he’s been a dear

‘THE BEST SONGS CAN RECREATE

THEMSELVES AND FEEL

TRUE AT DIFFERENT TIMES’