Sheryl Crow
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With Memorial Day still days away, Sheryl Crow has already unleashed the summer anthem of 2002 -- her hit single, "Soak Up the Sun." Like her breakthrough 1994 record, "All I Wanna Do," the new song is an ode to having fun, yet with undercurrents of unrest in the lyrics. Although her new album, C'mon C'mon, seems less introspective and more upbeat than her previous three albums, Crow says she had a difficult time, emotionally, making it.

The daughter of musicians, Crow has always been a complex artist. Blessed with great looks and a supple voice, she nonetheless has never tried to skate by. Her immersion in music shows in her craftsmanship as a songwriter, her decision to act as her own producer, and even her homages to artists such as Steve Miller (in the track Steve McQueen) and John Lennon (Diamond Road). She can certainly write catchy melodies, but shes not afraid to show a little -- or a lot of -- edge.

Now 40 -- "Forty is the new 20!" she insists -- Crow has seemingly skyrocketed to superstar status. But she actually took a steady, serious route to get there, studying piano, teaching music, and touring as a backup singer with such luminaries as Don Henley and Michael Jackson. Despite her phenomenal success, Crow has managed to retain an engaging down-home quality, complemented by obvious intelligence and thoughtfulness. She may have once offended Wal-Mart with a lyric about children buying guns there (in "Love Is a Good Thing"), but she's not likely to trash any hotel rooms or smash any instruments. As a co- founder of the Recording Artists Coalition, she's even appeared before Congress to ask that a law detrimental to artists be repealed.

The singer recently took the time to speak to StarPolish contributor Mary Lyn Maiscott who, like Crow, grew up in a small town in Missouri.

The Impact of Teaching

STARPOLISH: You taught music in a rural Missouri elementary school early on. How did that affect your songwriting and your singing?

CROW: I think teaching gave me an awareness of how important music is to little kids, as far as their development goes. I had a couple of classes of autistic kids, with several kids who were non-communicative, and music really does somehow or another get in and move molecules. It creates an immediate reaction in people, and you can definitely see it first hand with autistic kids in the way they react just to the vibrations of music. I carried that around with me, somewhere inside -- just knowing that music really does have a kind of miraculous power.

STARPOLISH: Your performance of "Safe and Sound" on the telethon after September 11th was very moving. Did doing that have a healing power for you?

CROW: It definitely did. I think just being a part of that was therapeutic for everybody involved because so many times as an artist you get thrown into these contrived environments where they put artists together who don't even know each other, who have very little in common, just to get a TV moment. And this was everybody wanting to be there. There were no advertisers, not even any fancy introductions for the artists. It was just something that felt good in everybody's soul, that kind of released some of the helpless feeling that everybody had after the event.

STARPOLISH: Getting back to the jobs that you had before you signed with a label -- do you think that musicians who have to work mundane or boring jobs can draw inspiration from them for their songs?

CROW: Oh, totally. I think that life totally informs your art, and whatever experiences you had, if you can pull from them, always create the best lyrics. I think for the most part, everybody goes through the same emotions and the same experiences in life, one way or another. If you're talking about relationships, everyone has experienced yearning and feelings of love, of despondency, of despair, of hope. All these things can be tapped into from just the simplest situations.

Mainstream Music

STARPOLISH: Your own music seems very personal. Did you concern yourself at the beginning with making commercial music that would be played on mainstream radio?

CROW: It was interesting -- on my first record, the first record that came out, the one song that had the strongest life and that drew the most attention was "All I Wanna Do," and that was a song that wasn't even going to go on the record. Nor was it the first single they released; it was probably the fourth or fifth. So I didn't really have a conscious plan of trying to get on the radio. In fact, I don't even think I knew what that entailed, obviously. So I think you just write songs that... you know, they just come out the way they are and then later on you look at them and pass judgment and all that. It's not like you're thinking, "Okay, Joe Schmo is gonna hear this and I better change this word or change that." It's a much more selfish process.

STARPOLISH: You did a lot of background and jingle singing, and playing gigs before you got signed. Do you have any advice for emerging artists about what they should be doing before they get signed?

CROW: Oh, gosh. I don't know. I did my share of waiting tables and, like I said, I taught school. I did do gigs. I think the main thing really is just to try to get better at your craft. Try to learn about yourself, who you are, so that when you're faced with people telling you that you shouldn't do this or you shouldn't do that, you have a pretty strong perception of what it is you want to be doing. I just think the best thing to do, no matter what kind of job you're doing to support yourself, is to try to stay true to your art and just to keep working at it.

STARPOLISH: Do you thinktoo much attention is focused on getting a major-label deal?

CROW: I think everything's changing. With the huge occurrence of people downloading and a CD burner in every household, the record industry's going to be changing and there are going to be a lot of new independent labels that creep up. I think there are other ways to get your music out if you don't get on the record label.

The Internet

STARPOLISH: How important is the Internet to your career?

CROW: I don't know. To be honest, I got started really before the Internet was as huge as it is, and I think most of my career was based on radio play. So I'm not really sure how important it is to my distribution. I think probably not that important.

STARPOLISH: Do you think it's a useful tool for emerging artists?

CROW: At this point I think it's a very useful tool to emerging artists, and it can be a really adventurous way to... David Bowie is a great example, as well as Aimee Mann, of getting your music out to the public and bypassing the major-label system. I'm not sure that one is better than the other. I just think that it provides opportunities to everyone.

STARPOLISH: You and Don Henley have lobbied for artists' rights. What can artists do to protect themselves when they're signing with a label?

CROW: The best thing, of course, is to get somebody to represent you who can understand the jargon of a record contract. I think there's as much to worry about in the area of digital distribution as there is in the old-fashioned label system. Everything is changing so heavily, it's just good to sort of stay abreast of what's really happening out there.

STARPOLISH: In terms of what should be in your contract and that kind of thing?

CROW:Yes. I think when you sign a record deal and you're an unproven entity, you have very little bargaining power with the record label. Your contract will pretty much be what a standard contract is.

STARPOLISH: So there's not really much you can do about that, just have a lawyer.

CROW: You can have a lawyer come in, but when you're telling a record label that this is what you want, they're going to say pretty much to you that you don't have any proven record, so you don't have much bargaining power. That's basically the way that it goes. Then, if you have success, later on you renegotiate your contract. That's been the standard in the recording industry.

Collaborative Efforts

STARPOLISH: On your new album you brought in some very big names -- Emmylou Harris, Lenny Kravitz, Stevie Nicks. What's the value of bringing in people with their own strong styles to your project?

CROW: My objective on this record had nothing to do with that. For me, the people who were on this record... were really about my comfort level. It was a very difficult record for me to make. I felt like I didn't want to be in the studio; I felt like I was missing out on my life. And so the more people that were around, it made it more fun for me. And these people were all people that were around serendipitously. Emmylou came down when I was in Nashville just to hang out and visit and she really liked that song, and I asked her if she would sing on it -- as well as Stevie, who I've had a long relationship with, and Don... So, you know, it just happened that way. It wasn't a conscious decision to have a bunch of collaborations on the record. I think I'm kind of known for having a collaborative career.

STARPOLISH: You did that right from the beginning, right? You had a group of people you met with regularly?

CROW: Well, the first record was sort of inspired by a group of people that were getting together on Tuesday nights. Although the whole record wasn't made that way, it began that way.

STARPOLISH: So you think that even from the beginning, people can kind of mix it up with their musician friends and be inspired by what they're doing?

CROW: I think it's a real individual decision. It just depends on what your career has been inspired by. I really gravitated when I was a kid to musicians like The Band and the Stones, and you would see these old films of people playing with each other. So that's kind of what I thought a music career would be like.

STARPOLISH: Are you touring now?

CROW: We're going to be touring starting in July, and we'll be touring probably through middle of September.

The Challenge for Emerging Artists

STARPOLISH: What do you see as the biggest change -- or maybe challenge -- for emerging artists today compared to when you were starting out?

CROW: I think the biggest challenge is trying to maintain; to have longevity. I think pop has become so disposable and it's become so sort of marketed that it's difficult to create a real legitimate fan base that is loyal. The best thing you can do for yourself and for your art is to get out and play and create a fan base who will be with you, and then to go from there -- as opposed to getting a lot of media attention and then trying to get followers.

STARPOLISH: And the Internet can be really helpful with that?

CROW: Yeah, absolutely.

STARPOLISH: Do you have any general words of advice for bands that might want to learn from your experience?

CROW: Yeah -- I think it really behooves artists to get good on their instruments, to learn other people's music, to practice, to try to write a little bit every day, to get good at your craft because no matter what is happening out there, it's really the song that's the most important thing; it's not what you're wearing. It's really the song that gets inside of people and moves them to buy your record.

STARPOLISH: That can definitely get lost with such a focus on image and all of that. Your lyrics are very rich, very detailed. Do you have anything you do to bring on the muse, or do the songs come easily?

CROW: I find inspiration in other writers. If I'm feeling a need to sit down and write and I don't know what I want to write about, sometimes I put on other records and it will loosen things up. I also think that reading books can be really helpful. Like on my second record, I was reading a book called Ask the Dust, by John Fante, and I kind of found my voice through the alter ego of Arturo Bandini. So I think sometimes you can really pull some inspiration from outside information.

STARPOLISH: Do you enjoy singing the new songs?

CROW: I do, very much. There's a lot of energy and it's a different record from the other three I've made, and its been real fun to play, real fresh.