Sheryl Crow

Fresh Air

In this episode of Fresh Air, Sheryl Crow discusses her new album, Pick You Em, reflecting on her journey from a backup singer for Michael J

Key takeaways

• Sheryl Crow's new album, Pick You Up, focuses on themes of human connection and the liberation of aging out of pop music.
• Crow recounts her formative experience touring with Michael Jackson, describing it as a 'crash course in the music industry.'

Main topics

• Sheryl Crow's new album
• Michael Jackson tour memories

Notable quotes

What art is, is a picture of who you are at any given moment.

Conclusion

A deeply reflective episode that connects the personal vulnerabilities

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:01) This election season, you can streamline your news intake with Up First. Our team of reporters and editors works overnight, so you can start every morning with three stories you need to know. In short episodes, 12-14 minutes long, to save you time and your sanity. Follow Up First on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 4 (0:22) This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Sheryl Crow was recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Now she has a new album. She talked about that and a whole lot more with our guest interviewer, Sam Fragoso. He hosts the interview podcast, Talk Easy. Here's Sam. Speaker 2 (0:39) Since her 1993 platinum debut, Tuesday Night Music Club, Sheryl Crow has won nine Grammy Awards with even more top-charting songs. You may know some of them. Speaker 2 (1:45) Her latest album is called Pick You Up. It features seven new songs, which she describes as, quote, commentaries on being human and wanting connection. They were written by Crow and longtime collaborator Jeff Trott, who she first worked with in the mid-90s back in Los Angeles. These days, Crow lives and works out of Nashville, Tennessee, and was recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But amid selling over 50 million records worldwide, headlining tours around the globe, the singer-songwriter from Missouri has also battled sexism, depression, and cancer. Quote, I've always had really high highs and real low lows, end quote, which across various genres and decades she's channeled through the music. Cheryl Crow, welcome back to Fresh Air. Thank you. You have said in the past that, quote, if I'm honest with myself, what art is, is a picture of who you are at any given moment. And so with your new record, Pick You Up. What does that picture look like? Speaker 5 (2:56) Well, yes. I think that whatever you are experiencing, it definitely informs your art. And it's been interesting to age out of pop music, but there's great liberation in being able to just write whatever I want and not be thinking, okay, is this going to get played on radio? Is it going to be as big as my last hit? Blah, blah, blah. For me, this record is me. At my age, as a mom, asking the same questions that I think a lot of us are asking about who we are at this moment in our humanity. What do we stand for? That being said, it sounds like a very morose record, a very depressing record, and it's really not. It's very hopeful. But there's a lot of questions on it, you know, about kind of where we're at right now and what kind of world we're leaving our kids. Speaker 2 (3:52) I think many people feel these are increasingly isolated times. Speaker 5 (3:55) Yeah. And Speaker 2 (3:56) I'm thinking the first song on your record is Speaker 5 (3:58) a Speaker 2 (3:59) track called Freight Train. Yes. That speaks to some of what we're talking about. Let's take a listen. Speaker 2 (5:10) That was the song Freight Train off Sheryl Crow's latest record, Pick You Up. Now, it sounds like you have built a pretty tight-knit life back in Nashville. You have horses, children. Your band, I think, records at a studio above the barn that you have. Speaker 5 (5:27) Yeah. Speaker 2 (5:28) And yet, I've got to say, that song. is a deeply lonely track. Where are you in that? Speaker 5 (5:36) Well, a couple of things. I think by nature, I have a certain amount of melancholy, a certain amount of like, I don't know, loneliness built in. I think most artists do. Otherwise, why would they be doing it? Is that the question? I think so. I mean, I've been really open about my mental struggles. And thank God, we're all talking about it now. And it's not, you know, it's not, sort of swept under the rug. But yeah, I mean, it took me a really long time to sort of navigate how to not sink further into darkness when it hits and how to know that it's not a forever thing and to be able to sometimes be quiet or sometimes to write songs to it. And for me, Speaker 5 (6:26) Music has been sort of a lifesaver, but it was also the thing that I made my identity. So that was also part of the issue of my feeling like, oh, I love music, but I hate music, you know, like the pressure of it. So I've learned how to navigate it, like how to not use it as an escape, but also to be able to use it as a salve. a system of relief. And that's really what this song is like. We're all kind of going through this weird thing where we're connected on social media. We're connected through watching reels. And then when we put the phone down, it's like, ugh, I should put my phone back up. Otherwise, what do I do? And that's really what the song is about. It's about, and I remember this feeling. I grew up in a town where we heard the train go by all the time. And it went through twice a day, always at night. And that feeling of a train whistle that always, for me, was emblematic of, you know, middle of the night, darkness, aloneness. And so that became sort of the metaphor for the song. Speaker 2 (7:34) One of the first jobs you landed was as a background singer for Michael Jackson on his Bad tour. And Jackson, as many people know, was notoriously meticulous. Speaker 6 (7:47) And so Speaker 2 (7:48) I wanted to play a bit from a rehearsal that you were part of where he's teaching you and everyone else how to harmonize on the song Billie Jean. This is in 1987. Speaker 6 (8:11) She says I am the one. You're so great. You're so great. Can Speaker 2 (8:18) you still hit that high note? She Speaker 6 (8:19) says I Speaker 5 (8:20) am the one. You know, it's crazy. I mean, when I reflect on my life, which I think when you get older, you do do a lot of that and you think, wow. Now that I'm able to look back on it, it is a profound thing to think about a kid who was from a town that was like. The closest city was Memphis. We had three or four stoplights. I mean, it was just a tiny place in the middle of a bunch of cotton fields. And then to dream about going on and working for Michael Jackson and people like Don Henley and singing with the Rolling Stones. I mean, I couldn't even dreamt that up. But if you put so much of your energy into something and if you have a modicum of ambition, which I will say I was very ambitious. Speaker 5 (9:08) I never, if there wasn't an opportunity, I created it. And the Michael Jackson tour wasn't, you know, I wasn't supposed to go. And I heard some singers talking about the audition and being recommended by Quincy or Bruce Wadding or Ted Templeton. This Speaker 2 (9:25) is when you're working as a waitress at a restaurant. Well, Speaker 5 (9:28) I was working as a waitress, but I was also doing a little bit of session work. I was finally getting some work as a session singer. I was on a session with Daryl Fantasy, who actually ultimately wound up being one of the backup singers. And he was the one that told me about it. And I crashed the audition. I said, hi, Michael, into a video. I said, I just moved here like six months ago as a school teacher. And then I sang a song by Denise Williams called Free. And I've got to be free. And I got called back, and we went from there. You're Speaker 2 (10:05) like, what, 26 at the time? 26. You've been in Los Angeles for six months? I've been Speaker 5 (10:09) there about six or eight months and didn't have a passport. And the next thing I know, we're rehearsing, and a month later we're in Tokyo playing for 65,000 people. So Speaker 2 (10:19) when you're watching him backstage waiting to go on in Tokyo, 60,000 people in the crowd, Speaker 5 (10:25) what Speaker 2 (10:26) did you take away from that? Speaker 5 (10:27) You have to remember, every single thing about this was new. I mean, I think I'd only been on one or two airplanes in my whole life. So every single thing about this was new. And obviously going to Tokyo, then going all over Japan, all over Australia, coming home for a little bit, doing a run, and then going to Europe, and then also compound that with rehearsing with a top-notch band. It was a crash course in music industry, for sure. How records get made, how records get on the charts. I mean, there were so many things about it that were new to me. And when I came home from the tour, I felt like I had lived in L.A. and worked for, you know, 30 years. It was such a crash course in the music industry. But 88 % of it favorable. Speaker 2 (11:22) And the 12 % of it? Speaker 5 (11:23) Not so. But, you know, there were things along the way that were really problematic. Michael's manager. I think as a young female artist with men in power, it can become problematic. Speaker 2 (11:36) You know, I want to know, did that experience inform not only the music you wanted to make, but the kind of musician you wanted to be in the world? Because you said in one interview recently, watching Michael. Quote, it was the first time I started thinking about why some people can manipulate 60,000 people physically. Speaker 5 (11:56) Yeah. Speaker 2 (11:57) I wondered what you meant by that or what you were thinking about. I Speaker 5 (12:01) look at Michael and I think he is the embodiment of. Somebody who's, I mean, you have the ego, which is obviously the flawed part, but then you have this other part that is completely anointed in the spirit, basically. I mean, that he could bring people in a way where it's physical. I mean, it changed the molecules in a whole stadium. People who were just enthralled and feeling music and crying and just... Speaker 5 (12:36) I've always said that there's a fine line between being able to really wield this connection but also knowing that you're doing it. And I think the moments when you're really lost in it are pure and beautiful. And he had so much of that. And then there's the other parts too where it's orchestrated and it's more ego-driven. And we all have it. Speaker 2 (13:06) And thinking about what would become your first release record, Tuesday Night Music Club, what's the track that best encapsulates the kind of song you wanted to make? What was the first song where