Sign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music
Get our Now Hear This email for free
Sheryl Crow has said she stands by her statement that making albums is “a waste of time and money”, even as the singer-songwriter was poised to release a new record later this week.
Despite taking a dim view on the future of the album as an artistic concept, the “If It Makes You Happy” singer, 62, hasn’t been given up on the format entirely. She will release her new record Evolution on Friday (29 March).
After previously announcing that her 2019 album Threads would be her “last full artistic statement”, Crow recently told Ed magazine: “I still think [creating albums] is a waste of time and money!
“People don’t listen to records as a full body of work, but I have all these songs that feel very timely…
“So, I thought, ‘Okay, I’m not going to make a conventional album, thinking about the beginning, middle and end.’
“Instead, it’s a compilation of new songs.”
(AP)
Discussing how she got into music, Crow told the magazine: “It was what I went to when all my friends started drinking and smoking pot and I felt left out.
“It was an identity crutch, and when it came time to figure out what I wanted to be, music was the thing I was good at.”
Reflecting on the moment she got noticed, she added: “I was singing in a bar when a producer came in and asked me to sing on a commercial.
“It was the first time somebody said, ‘I think you’re good, and I’m going to help you utilize what you do and you’re going to get paid for it.’”
Enjoy unlimited access to 70 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music
Sign up now for a 30-day free trial
Sign up
Enjoy unlimited access to 70 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music
Sign up now for a 30-day free trial
Sign up
The singer also discussed life with her two adopted sons Wyatt and Levi, saying: “They’ve changed my life in every possible way.
“It puts everything in perspective and makes it super easy to say no to things, because there’s not enough money in the world to make me uproot my kids or miss out on time with them.”
Last week, Crow told The Independent that she worries about the future of a music industry faced with the rise of AI.
“Brushing up against what artificial intelligence is going to mean in the artistic community… As an older mom, it really did teach me to think that we’re going to have to start protecting our souls’ inspiration – the difference between us and AI is that we have a soul. We have empathy, we have compassion,” said Crow.
She added that she had recently spoken to a young songwriter who explained that she and her colleagues were using ChatGPT in their work: “You say, I want to write a song that sounds like Sheryl Crow that uses these four metaphors, then it spits it back to you. Her argument was, you wouldn’t use everything, but there’s always a few good lines in there. I thought, no, no, no, no…”
Additional reporting by agencies