Sheryl Crow - 40, smart and principled - is a bit of an anachronism in modern pop. But, she tells Tony Clayton-Lea, people of any age will enjoy her upbeat, 1970s-style summer album.
She is as old-fashioned and cosy as a pair of your favourite slippers, but lately Sheryl Crow has been having a rough old time of it. Clinical depression, famous boyfriends leaving, creative processes interrupted by mid-life crises, fighting music industry business structures - all these and more have been grinding her down over the past couple of years.
Yet every cloud has a silver lining, and if it wasn't for Crow's unerring sense of survival and self-possession, she might not have finally come up with the goods on her new album, C'mon, C'mon.
It's a reassuring comfort-zone of a record - simultaneously familiar and retro yet bursting with the kind of sunny disposition that very good pop music can occasionally offer. In other words, if there is one record that could be the soundtrack to the forthcoming summer - a car-cruising, hair-ruffling, arm-waving, singalong record of memorable rock 'n' roll melodies and singular pop hooks - then C'mon, C'mon effortlessly passes the test.
Looking like a million dollars and not remotely close to her 40 years of age, Crow knows she is something of an anachronism in today's music charts of bare midriffed starlets, R&B divas and hip hop ingénues. She plays the game, though, because she's smart and she knows she has to: appearing on the front of lad's magazine, Stuff, her slim figure computer-enhanced; having the video for the album's first single, Soak Up The Sun, funded by American Express (it had final approval, too, and will use part of the video in a forthcoming AmEx ad).
"I don't fit in anymore," is Crow's stark response to a query about whether she feels like a mother hen to younger female pop stars such as Britney Spears, Christina Milian, et al.
"I'm a lot older, that's true, and I've been around a lot longer. Plus, the music is different; it's based on playing live, based on real songs. A lot of the current pop stuff is based more on beats, marketing and image. But that's always been a part of it. I'm sure my future success will be impacted upon by the likes of Britney, but I actually think it works to my benefit in that it sets me apart. When you have people such as Lucinda Williams, people who concentrate on writing, who are still vital, it sets you apart from what is now becoming the norm, which to me is kinda just marketing and softcore porn image over content. I don't know about radio - I think it's harder for someone like me to get played on the radio because what I do is not as commercially viable as youthful, beat-oriented music. But I don't really care."
Well, she does and she doesn't. True, she told her record company where to get off when they suggested she integrate hip hop beats into her music, but the American Express-funded video (it fretted over what appeared to be an eyelash "situation" in a close-up shot) surely compromises any full artistic control she might argue for.
"There wasn't any pressure to get the record out on time, but there was definitely an idea that perhaps I work beats into my record in an effort to appeal to the younger market. That was confusing for me and I didn't know how to work with that. I worked with some different people in an attempt, but it made me really not enjoy my own record making process."
Is she using the word "confusing" as a euphemism? She smiles in a way that says perhaps she is. "I wasn't terribly happy about it," she says, again choosing her words carefully, "but what it did was that it made me feel not good about the kind of music I make - that I'd become a dinosaur or an archaic artform at worst, obsolete at best. But I don't believe that anymore, because I think I made a record that a lot of people will enjoy. It may not capture the attention of a bunch of 13-year-olds. Then again, it might. Who knows?
"I sort of don't believe in the give-them-what-they-want marketing strategy, because I think there are a lot of people out there that can like good music. I also think that sometimes the marketing people underestimate the record buying public."
Having a history of depression is something that Crow, naturally, prefers not to discuss, but it's in her new batch of songs (C'mon, C'mon album track, Weather Channel, tells us she required medical intervention, anti-depressants and therapy, in order to bring about a recovery from the "black dog" scratching at her door) as well as between the lines of her conversation.
A creative block of sorts took place during the making of the new album, as well as a break-up with her then boyfriend, actor Owen Wilson. Add to these a change of record company and a feeling that music was no longer as life-saving an entity as it once was.
"God knows, it wasn't an easy record to go in and make," understates Crow.
"It's bad when the thing you love most in your life becomes work. Music has always been a great place for me to work things out - intellectually, emotionally. But when it became work I couldn't go there anymore because it felt like so much responsibility, and then it became pressure. This record eventually came to be about redefining my relationship to my work. I concluded that music isn't my life; it's just something I do as a part of it. Ultimately, I let music get to the point where it was usurping everything else, and that's not good."
Crow's reaction was to return to the recording studio and fashion as sunny-sounding a record as she could manage. "It's definitely the kind of music that was around in the 1970s, and I love that. The songs you can sing that feel like summer - I don't really hear so much of that on radio any more. God knows, radio is basically commerce now - they're not going to stick their necks out and play something that is not going to sell the products of their advertisers. Mind you, so far Soak Up The Sun is getting played and I'm shocked. I'm really blessed to get on the radio when everybody is screaming rock music is dead."
Her ongoing battle with the music industry (along with The Eagles' Don Henly, Crow spearheads the Recording Artists Coalition, a body demanding a bigger slice of a diminishing profit pie as they aim to alter record company practices in relation to contracts, intellectual property ownership, copyright and accounting) indicates an artist who, despite her occasional compromises, is prepared to bite the hand that feeds.
"If everything changes and artists become business partners with the record labels, then we'll get something which artists have never really had before - more power."
Despite her wealth, her multi-million record sales, her Los Angeles home with a view of the Hollywood Hills, her Grammy awards and her famous friends, Crow describes her character as being "rooted in small-town America; that's certainly my perception of the world."
She says she is drawn to people who have a well-developed sense of humour, an interesting emotional requirement given her problem with depression. "I thrive with funny people, with people who are curious - I'm that myself. I think I'm frank and forward; you know where you stand with me all the time, for better or worse." She says she's diligent about some things, lazy about others. "I'm lazy about taking care of the way I look, but I'm diligent about following through with things, about being on time. A sociable loner? That's a very good description of me, a person who pretty much feels that one or two people is enough for me - one or two great friends and about 100 people that are in and out. I'm really a family person, too."
When she looks into the future, what does she see? "I see the same person as I am now, because right now I feel like the same person I was when I was 20. I'm sure I'll basically be the same - not getting around as quickly, perhaps, and making music that is probably more sombre.
"Of course, I will completely have become a rap artist by that time, too, and probably wearing no clothesat all."
C'mon, C'mon is released today
