Sheryl Crow: Settled and Unsettled

Singer-songwriter and new mother emerges from a turbulent year with her most urgent, ambitious music yet

By Alan Light
Special to MSN Music

Sheryl Crow walks into the dressing room and laughs. She's backstage during rehearsal for "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," on the day her sixth studio album, "Detours," comes out. She was trying to bring her nine-month-old son, Wyatt, with her while she gets her hair camera-ready, but she's given up and left him in the next room with various band and crew members.

"I didn't want to tear him away from his fan base," she says. "He's just so social, such a great little dude."

That happy dude, who will soon be spotted crawling through the "Late Night" hallway, is the most visible manifestation of a period of extreme transition for Crow, who turned 46 the week after the album hit stores. She adopted Wyatt last year, after undergoing treatment for breast cancer and ending a relationship with cycling superstar Lance Armstrong. She moved her primary residence from Los Angeles to a farm outside of Nashville, Tenn. Recently, she has also thrown herself more aggressively into political activism, with a special focus on issues of environmental consciousness.

See photos of Sheryl Crow | Watch "God Bless This Mess"

All of this turmoil and activity is apparent on "Detours," which is the most diverse and ambitious project of Crow's career. Songs range from the intensely personal title track and "Make It Go Away (Radiation Song)" to the social critiques of "Gasoline" or "Out of Our Heads." Her own confused emotions are right out on the table; on the vitriolic "Diamond Ring," aimed straight at her exes, she sings "I say love is in the mind," only to follow a few minutes later with a track titled "Love Is All There Is."

The album also reunites Crow with producer Bill Bottrell, who worked on her 1993 breakthrough debut "Tuesday Night Music Club," a record that ended with bad feelings between the singer and some of the musicians, who claimed she took too much credit for the final product. Crow says that she still carries some baggage from that initial success. "When I came out with 'All I Wanna Do,' a lot of people felt I was just some pop diva," she says. "Most people still think that, but I hope they can find more depth in a record like this."

Despite -- or maybe because of -- the intimate nature of the "Detours" material, she is eager to start playing these songs live. She expresses no apprehension about taking Wyatt on the road. "He's amazingly adaptable," she says. "He's been on the tour bus, he's flown to Europe twice. And he's already learned, like I have, to get your sleep when and where you can."

MSN Music: How has having your son changed the way you do your job?

Sheryl Crow: It really informed the record in so many ways I didn't expect. You perceive everything differently, and it made the things I was writing about feel so urgent.

The environment was always an issue that was close to me, but now it becomes a personal affront -- that one-third of the species on earth won't be around when he's older, that I'll have to tell him how summer days used to be 90 degrees but now they're in the 100-teens. Even regarding the war, he's going to inherit this huge bill. So it makes it all more personal and puts a new slant on everything.

How did that come out in the songs?

I was really removed from the world when I was making this album. It was recorded at the farm, which is 40 miles away from anything, with this baby. It made it feel very missionary -- spreading the word, wanting people to wake up, like spreading the gospel. I felt really fearless writing whatever I wanted to write about.

There's such a distinction on "Detours" between the intimacy of the personal songs and the anthemic quality of the political songs. Is there a connection between the two sides, any through line that unifies the whole project?

I think it's this idea of being on a journey -- where you're very clear about who you are, and then realizing that you've gone on a detour that took you very far away from that. As a nation, too, we really are at the precipice of determining who we are and how we define ourselves.

It's so easy to stay distracted from all the things that are deeply emotionally taxing. There's so much to deal with that you just get overwhelmed and you become a small fixture in your own life. We've all spun toward this vortex of being numbed out. If we were really awake, we would be out in the street revolting, behaving very differently, with the sense that we have to share the planet with everybody else.

Is it just a coincidence that you went through all these changes in your own life at a time of such turmoil in the world?

Well, even personally, when you go through painful situations, people always advise you to distract yourself and just stay busy.

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