NASHVILLE: Sheryl Crow has spent the past seven years living the country life in country music’s capital with her country music friends, but the Grammy-winning rocker has only now come around to recording a country music album.
“Feels Like Home,” which will be released on September 10, is the culmination of the 51-year-old mother of two’s latest musical conversion, this time into a country singer.
“This album feels very natural,” Crow said in an interview at her 20-hectare estate on the outskirts of Nashville, where she keeps 11 horses, two head of longhorn cattle and dogs.
“It’s an extension of who I am, where I live. It doesn’t seem like too big of a departure. I’ve been absorbed into the city limits of Nashville.”
But it was just 20 years ago when Crow catapulted to pop-rock radio sensation with “All I Wanna Do,” proclaiming that “all I want to do is have some fun until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard,” the street that traverses Los Angeles.
Crow has sold upward of 20 million albums and has managed to make the transition from 1990s’ barroom rocker to polished pop singer in the first decade of the 2000s and now to a new residence in country.
In that time, she credits Rock and Roll Hall of Famers The Rolling Stones and Tom Petty, both of whom she has worked with, for helping her find her country voice, namely the Stones’ 1969 song “Country Honk” and Petty’s Southern-bred storytelling.
“After 25 years of songwriting, some of my best is on this record,” she said.
Crow has already scored a top 30 single on Billboard’s county music chart with “Easy,” a love song about domestic happiness.
Crow did get some help from her country music friends during her transition to Nashville, crediting her country conversion to critical favourite Emmylou Harris and country megastar Brad Paisley, who had long told Crow to take a leap of faith.
“He’d say, ‘If your records were to come out now, they would be on country radio,’” Crow said.
She finally succumbed, thanks to a performance she did with Loretta Lynn and Miranda Lambert of Lynn’s autobiographical “Coal Miner’s Daughter” at the 2010 Country Music Association Awards show.
“After that, he (Paisley) came to me and said, ‘Now, will you come home to the format you belong to?’” she recalled.
REUTERS
