SONGS THAT SHAPED ME

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

Sheryl Crow tells us about her musical loves

If 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’

friend to me’ [the two dated in the 1990s]). She also ‘pays it forward’ to up-and-coming Nashville artists, such as Maren Morris, whom she feels are continuing her own legacy of writing songs and honing their musical craft: ‘It’s an homage to all the people I’ve loved and been inspired by.’

The first single, a new version of her old song Redemption Day, was released in April. On it, Crow ‘duets’ with Johnny Cash, splicing his vocals from the song with her own. The timeless lyrics, which refer to the dangers of hate speech and climate change (‘Fire rages in the streets / And swallows everything it meets’) inspired her to revisit it. ‘With all that’s happening in the world, and also raising young boys and knowing how much our kids are affected by the decisions that we make, they hit me,’ she says. ‘The best songs can recreate themselves and feel true at different times. As a writer, you hope your songs transcend time.’

Here, she shares the songs that have shaped her life.