Sheryl Crow talks about performing “If It Makes You Happy” with Olivia Rodrigo at her Nashville show and releasing a new album ‘Evolution’, after announcing that ‘Threads’ would be her last album in 2019. On the album she tackles issues she’s passionate about most notably, artificial intelligence and how it’s going to change the music industry. She opens up about the collaborations with Peter Gabriel on “Digging In the Dirt,” Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine on the title track “Evolution” and the past collabs she’s done that she’s most proud of, her favorite Sheryl Crow cover and more!
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00:00And I sent him a broken record, which nobody wanted to touch.
00:02Everybody I played it for was like, oh.
00:05I mean, he was like, oh, man, you got to let me do this song.
00:07You got to let me do this song.
00:09Hi, I'm Sheryl Crow, and this is Billboard News.
00:21Hi, everyone.
00:21I'm Rebecca Milzoff.
00:22I'm the executive magazine editor here at Billboard.
00:25And I am so psyched to be here today with Sheryl Crow,
00:29one of my personal heroes.
00:42Happily, contrary to what she told us four years ago,
00:45she did not put out her last album in 2019.
00:48And she has an amazing new album, Evolution, coming.
00:52Yes, thank you.
00:53I know.
00:53I know better than to open my mouth and make such statements.
00:57But I keep saying that this is not an album.
01:01It's more a playlist of new Sheryl Crow songs.
01:05Hey.
01:06OK, I'm going to attempt to do this old song for you guys.
01:09It's old, but it's on the record, Evolution,
01:13that's just come out.
01:14Bill Battrell and I made the Detour's record
01:16when my 16-year-old was like four months old.
01:19And we wrote this song after it was done,
01:20but nothing ever happened with the song.
01:22And so I have carried it around in my heart
01:26for all these years and just felt like this
01:28was the time for it to come out.
01:30So we put it on this record.
01:31It's called Where.
01:35What's the difference between an album and a playlist?
01:38I'll tell you.
01:39And I am kind of joking about that, but not really.
01:43An album, for me, typically has been an artistic statement
01:47with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
01:49It's been curated.
01:50Certain songs didn't make it.
01:54And people would listen to it as a full body of work.
01:58Now with a playlist, obviously, I
02:00could wind up on a playlist with Shakira and Brandy
02:03and I Spy.
02:04I mean, this record didn't start out to be a record.
02:08It was just a bunch of songs I was writing after my kids
02:12would go to school and just grappling
02:14with artificial intelligence and just
02:17what that's going to mean in the future for not only artists,
02:21but for our kids.
02:23And I just started writing.
02:24And I sent all these demos to my friend Mike Elizondo, who's
02:29a great music producer.
02:30And I said, I don't want to produce myself.
02:32I don't even know what I have here.
02:34Here's five songs.
02:35Do you like them?
02:36Do you want to produce them?
02:37Like, just make little movies out of them.
02:39And he did.
02:41And so I just kept going.
02:43Evolution, ever-changing, lost in space.
02:50Going back to when you thought Threads was
02:53going to be your last album, what
02:54had kind of led you to that realization?
02:57And what did it feel like to kind of make that statement
02:59in the first place?
03:01It felt, to make that statement, it felt liberating for me.
03:04Because I've grappled through the last few years
03:07of watching people not buy albums,
03:11as an artist having no idea who your fan base is,
03:17of watching young artists.
03:18I mean, I don't know how people make it anymore.
03:20Because if you consider, you only get paid on a stream
03:24if people listen to at least 30 seconds of a song.
03:26And you only still get paid pennies.
03:30For somebody who grew up before the advent of technology
03:33and streaming, it's felt really demoralizing.
03:35It's felt antithetical to artistry.
03:40And I felt like the last album, the Threads album,
03:42felt like a wonderful bookend to a 30-year career based
03:46in collaboration and love of the art form.
03:51But that I would continue to write songs and just
03:53put them out, just one song at a time.
03:56Because that's kind of how it winds up being anyway,
03:58just on playlist.
04:00But this, I don't know, I wound up with nine songs.
04:02I was like, let's just put them all out at the same time.
04:05It feels like an emotional download as opposed
04:07to a curated album.
04:09I like that, emotional download.
04:11We will get into that.
04:12But speaking about Mike, I mean, he's an amazing producer.
04:15But I was going to say, I think that sort
04:17of an overlooked aspect of your artistry
04:20is the fact that you're a producer.
04:21You have produced many of your albums.
04:24And you became someone who knew about how a studio worked
04:28quite early on in your career, which is still
04:30all too rare for women artists.
04:33Yeah, I started producing myself on the second record.
04:35And I loved it.
04:38I felt like I was on a monumental learning curve.
04:41And I still, I love the act and the art of learning.
04:47I'm not the greatest bass player or the greatest guitar
04:50player or the greatest songwriter
04:51or the greatest singer or the greatest producer.
04:53But I feel like I'm always getting better.
04:55And that's what keeps me wanting to do it.
04:57It keeps me inspired.
04:58It keeps me feeling like my best work's in front of me.
05:01But that being said, on this bunch of songs,
05:04because they felt like little diary entries
05:07or letters to myself and to my kids,
05:11I didn't want to go in and do what I already know I do.
05:14I wanted my mind to be blown.
05:16I wanted the story, the screenplay
05:20that was the story of each song to have its own world.
05:24And I didn't want to do it myself.
05:26I wanted somebody to just show me
05:28what was capable in the area of cinematography, if you will,
05:33sonic cinematography, to just take these little vignettes.
05:41And I say Martin Scorsese them.
05:43But yeah, Vin Vendor's them or whatever.
05:46Yeah, I feel like that's a good way of describing
05:49kind of Mike's thing.
05:50But I was curious why he, in particular,
05:52felt like the right producer for this.
05:53He just kept coming up for me, largely
05:56because I wanted to do Digging in the Dirt.
05:58And I kept feeling like I got to do this song
06:01and I got to do it with Mike.
06:02And then everything else kind of just came together.
06:06This time you've gone too far.
06:09This time you've gone too far.
06:12And then I sent him another song.
06:14I sent him Broken Record, which nobody wanted to touch.
06:17Everybody I played it for was like, oh.
06:20Not producer-wise, but like friends.
06:22Even my kids were like, you can't put that out.
06:24Don't hate me more when you hear this song.
06:29Why?
06:29I sent it to him and he was like, oh, man,
06:31you got to let me do this song.
06:32You got to let me do this song.
06:34I think people were nervous about how
06:37it feels specifically pointed at people who wield hate.
06:42And nobody in my life wants to see
06:44me cross the line of getting myself in trouble.
06:46You know what I mean?
06:48When I spoke out about the Covenant shooting, which
06:51was a year ago today, even my parents were worried.
06:55They were like, just worry about your safety.
06:58We had tons of death threats.
06:59But the thing that was more troublesome to me
07:02were the people that I knew that were not just
07:07on the opposite side, but that were not willing to,
07:10let's come together and talk about with good intention
07:13about what we can do to make things safe.
07:16So the song really was born of that.
07:19And it has a sense of humor somehow.
07:21Yeah, it does.
07:22I mean, because the whole thing is ridiculous.
07:24It is.
07:25I mean, it's just ridiculous.
07:27Everybody wants their kids to be safe.
07:30It becomes about ego and who's right and who's wrong.
07:33And my mom has always said, it's just as easy
07:36to be nice as it is to be a jerk.
07:39This is true.
07:40I mean, what you said about the idea of an emotional download,
07:43I think the pervading feel of the album to me
07:46is one of reflectiveness of someone
07:49who is still frustrated with a lot of things about the world,
07:52but has maybe arrived at a place of realizing there's not
07:55a solution to everything.
07:57What can I do and also stay sane?
08:00You mentioned AI, and we'll get to that too.
08:02But what were you kind of generally thinking about
08:05that you were channeling into the songs?
08:07Well, I think any time you, as an artist,
08:11any time you write or paint or whatever,
08:13you are bringing not only your life experience,
08:15but that moment to your art.
08:18And for me, what my life was informing my art
08:22is a head-scratching moment of who are we,
08:27who have we become, and what are we heading toward?
08:31Very small questions.
08:32Very small.
08:33I mean, it's really upbeat.
08:34It's a dance record.
08:37I know it does sound like a downer,
08:38but honestly, I look at it and I go,
08:42I'm only talking about the very things
08:44that every single person is thinking about every day,
08:48because that's the human experience.
08:49Especially if you're a mom and you're raising kids
08:52and knowing what's coming,
08:57when truth, which is the easiest thing,
08:59I mean, when you're raising little kids,
09:01you say, well, you just don't, you never tell a lie.
09:05The truth is always important.
09:06And now it's like, truth?
09:08I mean, it's not based,
09:10my algorithm is telling me that my truth is right.
09:14It's very confusing.
09:15So as an artist, I mean, I'm very lucky
09:18that I have a place to go to literally download
09:21what, how do I feel about this?
09:24And what are the questions I have?
09:27And does anybody have any answers?
09:28I'm just throwing it out there in music form.
09:32I, of course, don't know how the exact timelines lined up,
09:35but having seen the documentary about you, Cheryl,
09:37which is great.
09:38It's always hard to look back and talk about who you were,
09:41because it's only who you think you are.
09:43That required so much reflection on your part,
09:46kind of looking back on everything you've been through
09:48in the music industry,
09:50how it's intersected with what's happening
09:52in the real world as well, both good and bad.
09:55And I was curious whether that experience at all
09:57kind of helped put you in that mindset
09:59of kind of thinking about these things.
10:02I think the thing that's put me in this mindset
10:04more than anything is raising kids,
10:06because the questions aren't like questions I grew up with.
10:09My kids do say I was born in the last century, and-
10:13It's actually true.
10:14Not quite, but as far as technology is concerned,
10:16yes, yes, I was.
10:18But I mean, some of the things
10:19that they are already talking about,
10:20they're already concerned about are things I,
10:23I mean, I was concerned about
10:24whether I was gonna be able to put gas in my car.
10:28I wasn't concerned about whether there were gonna be
10:30enough trees to provide oxygen for all,
10:33whether I was gonna go to school and be shot.
10:36It's another world.
10:38So doing the documentary was definitely a game changer
10:44in that it's rare you sit down
10:47and literally reflect on your entire life, you know?
10:51And it's really hard work.
10:53It was really exhausting.
10:55But I think that in conjunction with COVID
10:57and everybody was isolated and having that time to reflect,
11:04it's made me feel so much more precious
11:07about the wonderful job that I have
11:10and that I can use my job to help me.
11:13You know what I mean?
11:14If other people enjoy it, that's great,
11:17but it helps me.
11:20♪ No way of dealing with this feeling ♪
11:25The album itself has a couple
11:27of very big collaborations on it.
11:30And collaboration has been such a huge part of your career.
11:33I feel like I'm still, like,
11:35discovering Sheryl Crow collaborations
11:36I didn't even know existed.
11:38What has your attitude been
11:40about collaboration throughout your career,
11:41whether it's in performance or on record?
11:46I think the biggest blessings
11:51for me have been the collaborations.
11:52I mean, I can remember specifically standing on stage
11:55in Modena, Italy and singing Mozart with Pavarotti
12:00and seeing my parents in the audience
12:03and them just being overwhelmed with emotion.
12:06I'm sure it's because they were like,
12:07oh my gosh, all the years of piano lessons,
12:09they paid off, she's like a real musician, you know?
12:13But I mean, just, you can't envision it.
12:16You know, when you're a kid
12:17from a town of three stoplights,
12:18you can't envision going to Italy, you know,
12:23let alone singing with Pavarotti
12:25and then singing with Eric Clapton.
12:27And there've been so many of those experiences
12:30that have really, I think,
12:33it's taken me a long time
12:34to actually really experience it in my body.
12:39But when it's happening,
12:41singing with Kris Kristofferson,
12:42singing with Willie,
12:43singing with Emmylou,
12:44singing with Stevie,
12:46when it's happening,
12:47there's not anything like the sound
12:49of two voices and the vibrations they make
12:52and how it changes the molecules in the room.
12:54And I can write the greatest songs in the world,
12:58but until I sing them,
12:59until I sing them with someone,
13:01you don't know the full effect.
13:03♪ Digging in the dirt ♪
13:06♪ Stay with me, I need you ♪
13:08Well, I mean, speaking of magical blending of voices,
13:11we should talk about Digging in the Dirt.
13:13Oh my goodness.
13:14Which I think I audibly squealed
13:16when I saw that you were doing this with Peter Gabriel.
13:19I'm a huge Peter Gabriel fan.
13:20I am too.
13:21And such a great song too.
13:23Talk a little bit about how that happened
13:25in the first place
13:26and why that song was the song for you.
13:28Yeah, it's a really weird thing.
13:31But in the last few years,
13:34I decided I would really investigate
13:38what it meant to sort of redirect my impulses.
13:43And I did a curated,
13:46through Johns Hopkins, mushroom journey,
13:49psilocybin journey.
13:51And to me, what it felt like literally,
13:53for me, nature has been the only place
13:55I've actually been able to hear myself.
13:59It felt like I was digging through dirt.
14:02I mean, almost like any of the videos
14:04that he would have made where you,
14:07or even the old science videos
14:08where you see ants digging through, you know.
14:11Which is what his music video is like, pretty much.
14:13Yes, exactly.
14:14And so I just, that song kept coming up for me.
14:18And one morning I was out jogging
14:20and I was, the song came on my playlist
14:22and I called Mike Elizondo and I said,
14:26I don't even know why I'm calling you
14:27except to say, I need to do this song
14:29and I need you to produce it.
14:30And would you do it?
14:31And he's like, yeah.
14:33Then we did it and we sent it to Peter
14:35and he loved it and he sent it back
14:38with his voice on it.
14:41Apropos of nothing.
14:42Yeah, it's just crazy, you know.
14:44I'm a huge proponent or believer in manifesting,
14:47but I don't know that I could have manifested
14:48that in a thousand years,
14:49except to say that at a certain point
14:51you do enough work and enough digging
14:53that somehow the dirt falls together, you know.
14:56Yeah, and I mean, coming sort of
14:58after hearing the rest of the album,
15:00it really seems thematically on point too.
15:02It was, I think, the jumping off point
15:06for the whole record.
15:07From that came Evolution.
15:09And then from Evolution came Broken Record.
15:13And then from that came Do It Again.
15:15And they were all things that led back to
15:18who am I, what do I wanna be,
15:20who do I wanna be, how do I wanna change
15:23the world around me, and how do I model
15:25that to my children?
15:27Mm-hmm.
15:28Another great collaboration on Evolution
15:30with Tom Morello.
15:32I, which, I listened to it before I even realized
15:36it was Tom, and I was like,
15:37who is absolutely shredding in the middle of this song?
15:40And then I was like, oh, of course it's Tom Morello.
15:41Oh my God, I mean, honestly,
15:44he and I both were going to be inducted
15:48into the Hall of Fame.
15:50And Mike had created this crazy sci-fi track
15:54around Evolution, which is what it wanted
15:57and what it needed.
15:59And then he goes, what do you think
15:59about getting Morello to play?
16:01And I was just like, oh my gosh.
16:05And when he sent it back, I mean,
16:06I reached out to him, he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
16:08I'll send it, so.
16:09I mean, there's nobody that plays like him.
16:10And it literally sounded like Ray Bradbury
16:12had taken a guitar and eaten it
16:15and just regurgitated it into this incredible,
16:19like, where am I going here?
16:21So cool.
16:22Like outer space.
16:23Yes. Totally.
16:25Is this possibly the first rock song about AI?
16:28I was thinking this to myself.
16:29I don't know.
16:31I don't know.
16:31I've not run across any,
16:33but I'm sure there will be many.
16:37I can tell you for a fact that I've heard a demo
16:41of a song that a friend of mine wrote
16:43and she interjected John Mayer's voice
16:47onto the demo for $5.
16:50And it made me cry.
16:51I was just like, oh my gosh, that's so scary.
16:53It sounded so real.
16:56So yeah, it's scary territory.
16:58♪ Turned on the radio and there it was ♪
17:02♪ A song that sounded like something I'd heard before ♪
17:05I mean, the song starts out with you kind of,
17:07I don't know if it's imagined or real,
17:09envisioning hearing the song that you swear is your voice,
17:13but you somehow know is not.
17:15Where did that kind of scene come from
17:17and sort of lead you into the idea
17:18of investigating this in a song?
17:20Well, it came from reading about
17:24what the Beatles were doing.
17:25And while that was different,
17:26I know that they used AI to pull John's vocal off.
17:30I just started thinking about my manager
17:33and I've had numerous conversations about this.
17:35I'm like, if I ever go down on a plane,
17:36I don't want you releasing my old demos.
17:39I want my demos in lock and key.
17:41I don't want people making money off of stuff
17:42I didn't want to come out.
17:45But this was a different thing.
17:46This was like the George Carlin thing
17:48where somebody could just take his image
17:51and manipulate it to use their jokes or whatever.
17:55And I started thinking about that
17:57and that's how it came about.
17:58Just the fear of where are we going on this?
18:01And the one thing that was comforting to me
18:04is the fact that AI can't learn empathy.
18:07It can't learn soul.
18:09It can't learn compassion.
18:12It has no spirit.
18:14♪ You can't feel love ♪
18:15♪ Cause it's written in the human heart ♪
18:21Everything in life is about intention.
18:23You want to give money to somebody who needs money,
18:26you can't worry about whether they go
18:27and climb into their Ferrari.
18:29The blessing is in the intention.
18:32It is the thing that is going to be tantamount
18:37when it comes to AI.
18:38And that is what's the intention behind it.
18:40If somebody's using it for dark purposes,
18:42then it's bad.
18:44If somebody's using it to discover treatments for cancer,
18:47it's great, you know?
18:48♪ It makes you happy ♪
18:54I have to ask about you and Olivia Rodrigo.
18:56You seem to have a real great relationship at this point.
19:00She recently performed with you.
19:01Can you tell me a little bit about how that's evolved
19:03and why?
19:05Well, I met Olivia at the Women in Music,
19:09Billboard Women in Music.
19:10And I was a fan already.
19:13I listened to her stuff and I go,
19:15oh my gosh, I can hear The Breeders,
19:17I can hear Blondie, I can hear...
19:19I mean, she's got that real punk rock thing
19:22that I hadn't heard in so long.
19:26But then she has these great lyrics and these great hooks.
19:29And so I was kind of impressed with that,
19:31and then I met her.
19:32And very different than my situation,
19:36she came up in the business.
19:38I wasn't, I mean, I was 28 when I first made it.
19:41I'd already been a school teacher and everything else.
19:43But I liked how grounded she was.
19:45I liked that she seemed sort of out of,
19:49you know, with regard to the fame thing,
19:51that wasn't her major attraction, you know.
19:57Just got to know her, really like her.
19:59I feel like she just keeps writing her truth.
20:01She's got an experience that backs up everything
20:04in her songs.
20:05I just like her, you know, I root for her.
20:08I feel like over the past five years,
20:09there has been a great influx of Sheryl Crow covers
20:13that we get to hear from artists like this.
20:16And I'm curious whether you have a favorite
20:19Sheryl Crow cover you've heard,
20:21especially as someone who herself started in a covers band.
20:23Yes, I do.
20:24At Cashmere in Columbia, Missouri,
20:27at the University of Missouri.
20:27Amazing name for a band.
20:28Yes.
20:31I loved Haim.
20:33Are you strong enough to be my man?
20:37I mean, you seem very, you know, not reinvigorated,
20:42but feeling very into making music right now.
20:45Like, has the experience of evolution
20:47made you rethink the album thing going forward?
20:50Like, have you adjusted what the prognostication is?
20:53I think I wrote six or seven songs,
20:59including Digging in the Dirt, we did that.
21:02And then I wound up with two old songs
21:05that I really felt were important to put on there.
21:08And it wound up just being like eight or nine songs
21:11that literally feels like a playlist.
21:15It feels like all, just all new songs.
21:18I think I would forevermore approach it like that,
21:20where as I'm writing something, I'm not thinking about,
21:23okay, I've written an up-tempo song,
21:25now I need to write a mid-tempo song.
21:28Instead of, as a record maker, just putting songs out.
21:33Whether I put them out like a whole bunch of songs
21:35or put them out like, okay, here's a song,
21:37here's a couple of songs.
21:39I don't know.
21:40I don't know what comes next.
21:42And that's okay.
21:43That's okay.
21:43That's an answer I can live with.
21:45Yes.
21:45Yeah, thank you.
21:47Well, thank you so much, Cheryl.
21:48Thanks for having me.
21:49It's really great to talk to you.