Sheryl Crow calls albums ‘a waste of time and money’ as she releases new record Evolution

Singer-songwriter to release what she describes as a ‘compilation of new songs’ later this week

Sheryl Crow has said she stands by her statements that making albums is “a waste of time and money”, even as the singer-songwriter was poised to release a new record later this week.

Despite taking a dim view on the fulture of the album as an artistic concept, the “If It Makes You Happy” singer, 62, hasn’t given up on the format entirely. She will release her new record Evolution on Friday (29 March).

After previously announcing that her 2019 album Threads would be her “last full artistic statement”, Crow recently told Red magazine: “I still think [creating albums] is a waste of time and money!

“People don’t listen to records as a full body of work, but I had all these songs that felt very timely...

“So, I thought, ‘Okay, I’m not going to make a conventional album, thinking about the beginning, middle and end.’

“Instead, it’s a compilation of new songs.”

Sheryl Crow in 2023

(AP)

Discussing how she got into music, Crow told the magazine: “It was what I went 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.”

Reflecting on the moment she got noticed, she added: “I was singing in a bar when a producer came in and asked me 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.’”

The singer also discussed life with her two adopted sons Wyatt and Levi, saying: “They’ve changed my life in every possible way.

“It put everything in perspective and made it super easy to say no to things, because there’s not enough money in the world to make me uproot my kids or miss out on time with them.”

Last week, Crow told The Independent that she worries about the future of a music industry faced with the rise of AI.

“Brushing up against what artificial intelligence is going to mean in the artistic community... As an older mom, it really did jar me to think that we’re going to have to start protecting our souls’ inspiration – the difference between us and AI is that we have a soul. We have empathy, we have compassion,” said Crow.

She added that she had recently spoken to a young songwriter who explained that she and her peers were using ChatGPT in their work: “You say, I want to write a song that sounds like Sheryl Crow that uses these four metaphors, then it spits it back to you. Her argument was, you wouldn’t use everything, but there’s always a good few lines in there. I thought, no, no, no, no...”

Additional reporting by agencies