Sheryl Crow On Motherhood, Her Politics, Her New Single, And Filming In Front Of The White House

Sheryl Crow has plenty to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. In the last year, the nine-time Grammy winner (and HuffPost blogger) became a mother to adopted son Wyatt, traveled the country on a Stop Global Warming college tour, got up in Karl Rove's grill, and oh yes, finished a new album to be released next February. Crow took a break from mixing to chat about her new single "Shine Over Babylon", her Thanksgiving plans, and how we, as a nation, need to wake up.

What are you up to for Thanksgiving? I am heading home to Kennett, Missouri, where my whole family is, and I'm sure we're going to overeat. Thanksgiving is actually my favorite holiday; it's so relaxing. There's no hustle and bustle like the Christmas gift bloat, and then I'm heading to New York to do press for this album.

Why did you choose "Shine Over Babylon" as your first single? Actually, this isn't technically the first single. The record business has changed so drastically -- it's like the Wild West out here -- that the game plan was to get out as much music before the album came out as possible, so people could hear it. This was the first one that I felt should come out because it really speaks to the tone of the record and for me, it has a lot of impact as to what's going on right now. We're going to follow it with three more songs with video on YouTube in the upcoming week.

YouTube, huh? Do people even bother with television now? As far as I know, MTV and VH1 don't play music videos any more; it's all reality TV and game shows, so I don't know if they'll really pick up a video. To me, it's an interesting time because you used to make a video for a million dollars with a great director. Now, you spend $10,000, if that, with no hair and make-up, and do it completely guerrilla style. For example, we did a song called "God Bless This Mess" about the war and we shot it in front of the White House and nobody stopped us. It's really really exciting to just go out and shoot, like how Bob Dylan shot "Don't Look Back" -- it's just a guy with a camera and you're performing the song.

Did no one care you were recording in front of the White House? It was almost like I was shape-shifting, honest to god. I couldn't get arrested doing this video. I was even trying -- I mean, is anyone even noticing that I'm singing subversive lyrics right in front of the White House? Goes to show you.

"Shine Over Babylon" isn't necessarily as controversial, but it's certainly eco-conscious. Even though it may sound like an apocalyptic diatribe, I hope people will find a certain modicum of hope in it. It's really more of a battle cry than about being disillusioned.

What issues work you up the most? The last three years have been very impactful for me, particularly when it comes to politics. Really, even the last six years. My album is called "Detours," and I come back to that theme all the time, because personally... [Crow shifts voices] Hi big boy, my smiley bug, my son just got up... Anyway, I always think of detours as some path that you take away from yourself before it eventually brings you back to remembering who you are. For the last six years, we've been sent on the most massive detour based on fear and misinformation, and we have to really look at our selves in this moment in time -- and it's directly correlated to our lack of passion and our propensity to fall asleep in the face of misinformation -- and just figure out who we are. Personally, the detours I've been on relationship-wise and with my breast cancer, have helped define who I am and who I'm going to be.

I can imagine motherhood is also a transformative experience. I'll tell you -- not to sound like a Hallmark card, but just having him around has rendered my heart completely open and fearless. [When writing the album,] I don't remember exercising my overactive ability to edit myself at all, and I feel an urgency for the truth to prevail. It doesn't matter if [my] lyrics are biting or going piss people off -- I have to write what I'm feeling right now because I have this little guy who's looking at me, and asking the question, "What kind of world is awaiting me?" and that was really what propelled my record.

Comments

[ceasenake]

Huffpo sensors,

Are you deleting every comment that mentions Crow and single squares of toilet tissue?

[USMC1980]

She's a great singer, but I still say one of the best performances ever was the way she humiliated poor, fat, Karl Rove. That boy got an old fashioned ass whipping, and then cried about it to the press the next day, which made it even better.

[watchingthings]

We just had a headline that we need to worry because those behind hollywood's sucess are undereducated. Do we have to believe what Sheryl Crow says now?

[ljsfolly]

Well it sounds like a bunch of Sheryl Crow haters has some time off. Instead let us think back to the vietnam war when everyone who had a voice was singing AND speaking their minds about the lied about trumped up war and the thousands of our own being killed and maimed. Not too much about the damaged minds until later but it still came out. Who this war has written about it had songs they did about it and spoke about it to bring out the truth of what is going on? We have a sanitized situation here due to the secrecy and the lies along with the media not showing the proper interest in the why instead of what the White House says. The main difference those of us who lived during that time and this time know is the draft. Those who could not get out of their draft number going and didn't run to another country went. Many of those across cultures died or came back to a country who gave a damn not for their care but for them being "misfits". No longer who they were before they went. Sorry you all are so focused on the person rather than the intent to put out some music to speak her mind about where we have come to be. Turkeys are not only on the table.

[samuraijack]

I think someone's Mommy didn't call them up from the basement in time for warm stuffing, so little shitty pants has to talk about sterilizing people. Why don't you go jerk off to your Anne Coulter poster pal. Jack Out.

[Kenji]

What's going on here? Have all these posters gone nuts with their Thanksgiving cranberries? She's a nice, talented person who makes nice, not great, music and is doing her bit to make this a better world. I just wish she wouldn't say "impactful". (Okay, lyrics aren't her strong suit.)

[Tiberon]

The bitter, envious trolls always feel the need to comment on posts about talented, charismatic people like Crow, insisting on their contempt for her ilk. Their jealousy is so pathetic.

[retreadite]

How did Clapton ever fall for this broad?

[maxfusion]

Why are liberals so obsessed with entertainers, Hollywood, and homosexuals?

[cedarman]

I'm from Senath, my wifes maiden name was Counts we met while you as still in high school
I'm proud of the things you do for the environment, and wish I had the resources to do the same
I,ve been disable since i was 31 so there's very little I can do , so you go girl

[THP]

Sanjong, You would just be amusing if you weren't so dangerous. Scientific consensus exists on climate change. Rarely does anything in science reach the level of consensus that carbon output based climate change has received. Do some scientists question or disbelieve? Yes. Do some research and discover that every single nations National Institute of Science supports it, and almost every other significant scientific group in the world.

[SmellyOne]

"I couldn't get arrested doing this video. I was even trying -- I mean, is anyone even noticing that I'm singing subversive lyrics right in front of the White House? Goes to show you."

Goes to show you how great this country is with it's freedom to dissent with leadership.

What did Cheryl expect to get arrested for?

[Sanjong Thapa]

from IBD

'What's stunning is that the global warming true believers have confessed to being guilty of sending out hobgoblins — and gotten away with it.

"I believe it appropriate to have an overstatement of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate to opening up the audience to listen," Gore told the environmentalist magazine Grist in 2006.

In the early days of the warming scare, when Gore was just a Tennessee senator who had mere presidential, not world-saving, aspirations on his mind, Stanford University environmentalist Stephen Schneider told Discover magazine in 1989 that "we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public's imagination."

"That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have."

Guilty as well is James Hansen, the climate change godfather, who said in 2003 that "emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue."

We're sure he no longer believes they are appropriate because he knows they aren't needed. He and others have effectively bamboozled the world into believing that climate disaster is imminent. '

[ecSurfer]

President John F. Kennedy authorized the practice of awarding Presidential Medals of Freedom to persons "for especially meritorious contribution to (1) the security or national interests of the United States, or (2) world peace, or (3) cultural or other significant public or private endeavors" (Executive Order 11085 dated Feb. 22, 1963).

I nominate Sheryl. Er, this may however first require a real president. Please get on that folks, will you please.

[Blutus]

What issues work you up the most? The last three years have been very impactful for me, particularly when it comes to politics


"...very impactful...."??

Please, just shut up and play the guitar.