Sheryl Crow reflects on the strange way drugs shaped her music career

Singer-songwriter turned to music after feeling ‘left out’ by her friends

Sheryl Crow has recalled how she made her first steps into a music career after her friends began experimenting with drugs and alcohol.

The Missouri, US-born singer-songwriter has been promoting her latest album, Evolution, which is released this week.

In an interview with Red magazine, the Grammy-winning “Soak Up the Sun” artist, 62, said music was what she turned 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,” she said.

In the same conversation, Crow also reflected on the moment she was scouted by a producer, who heard her singing in a bar and asked her to sing on a commercial.

“It was the first time somebody said, ‘I think you’re good, and I’m going to help you utilise what you do and you’re going to get paid for it,”’ Crow said.

She continued to stand by her previous statements that making albums is “a waste of time and money”, even as she prepares to release her latest LP.

“People don’t listen to records as a full body of work, but I had all these songs that felt very timely,” she said. “So, I thought, ‘Okay, I’m not going to make a conventional album, thinking about the beginning, middle and end.’”

Sheryl Crow is releasing a new album, ‘Evolution’ (PR Handout)

In a recent interview with The Independent, Crow said she found “liberation” in the fact that she can write about whatever she wants “because it is most likely not going to be heard”.

“I mean, that sounds defeatist! But there is liberation in it,” she explained. “You think less about who you offend. I’m not vying for spots on the radio. Being able to write about the things I see is a relief.”

Sheryl Crow performing at Glastonbury in 2019 (Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

In the same interview, the “If It Makes You Happy” star revealed she had a life-changing conversation with her mother, after Crow was recovering from breast cancer in 2006.

“She said, ‘Be a mom. Go to a sperm bank. Adopt a baby. We’re with you.’ I realised the one person I was measuring myself against was saying, ‘Don’t do it the way I did it.’ It was like her giving me permission,” she said.

“But I think it was an angelic moment, because it was very not like my mom just to say, ‘Go have a baby.’ Everything got set on a course when I looked at my life and went: ‘What now?’”

You can read Crow’s interview with The Independent here.

Additional reporting by agencies.