Gone are the days that questions surrounding Sheryl Crow’s relationship status help fill the racks at newsstands, and gone are the nights of her waiting until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard. These days, she is more likely to be found dancing with her two sons, Levi and Wyatt, in pajamas at their home, located outside of Nashville. Despite Crow’s nine Grammy awards and album sales reaching more than 50 million, her sons, ages 5 and 7, prefer the sounds of pop music — such as Fifth Harmony’s “Worth It” — to their mom’s top hits.
Crow made the decision to adopt her sons — first in 2007 and again in 2010, and Levi and Wyatt have been her main focus ever since. “I have had some great relationships; I have had some interesting relationships and I have had some pretty not-so-great relationships … I always knew I wanted to be a mom. I have a great mom and a great family,” she explains. “After having cancer, I came to the realization that the picture you give yourself of how life is supposed to be is just a story … all of these children who come into the world, they need love. They need someone who is committed to being their advocate, their guardian, their mom,” she enthuses. Crow may have traded in her sold-out nightly shows for her home dance parties, but she still spends time in the recording studio and onstage. With her recent performance on her red, white and blue Telecaster guitar at the Pilgrimage Music Festival as proof, it is safe to say she is still killing it.
“You know, I still really love what I do,” Crow shares. “I love making music; I love writing. I always feel like my best work is in front of me, so that keeps me intrigued and motivated … as a writer, life always informs your art. For me, songwriting is something I really enjoy, but also something that is a necessity. I can sit and complain about the happenings of the world, or I can sit down and write a piece of music that actually changes the molecules. That is really where my joy is derived.” Crow allows her music to speak for itself and would give that advice to young, rising musicians. When given the opportunity, she encourages them to play their music authentically and allow themselves the ability to grow as artists.
It has been 22 years since Crow’s rise to fame and the launch of her first album “Tuesday Night Music Club,“ and although she would encourage her younger self to work a little less and stop to smell the roses a little more, she would never rewrite her past, even if given the option. She has spent the last 10 years building a life and a family in Tennessee, just a few hours from her hometown in Missouri. The decision to relocate was driven in large part by her DCIS breast cancer diagnosis, which came in 2006, six days after a public separation from her then-fiancé, Lance Armstrong. “It was just a frantic moment of Oh my gosh. What am I doing with my life? I thought, I want to go closer to home; I want to put down roots. After 22 years of living in LA, I never put down roots,” she reasons. “Do I miss LA? Not even for a second. As soon as I got here, it felt like home.”
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originally published on styleblueprint.com
