“People have a very, very succinct opinion about who I am, which is largely because of the music that hit,” legendary recording artist Sheryl Crow said during a TCA press conference to promote the documentary film Sheryl, which premieres on SHOWTIME on May 6th. “All that pop stuff that became well-known for most people feels good, lifts people up, and they think, oh, I'm just this happy pop songwriter. And I tell young artists all the time: Those songs are the gifts that give you the opportunity to write the stories about who you really are. And for me, there's pieces of me in every song that's ever made it. But the deeper stuff and the stuff that's, I think, exemplary of who I am in my life are in the albums. And this documentary, I think, is the first time that people who don't know who I am will get an opportunity to at least have a better picture of who I am.”
(SHOWTIME)
“I was so thankful that Sheryl trusted me with her story,” director Amy Scott said, whom Sheryl Crow sought out after seeing her film about Hal Ashby. “I think a big part of the trust was also working with Scooter and Pam and working with her team and forming sort of giant family of communication… I was never nervous because I felt like Sheryl and I had a really, very intense line of communication and understanding without constantly having to communicate. So I felt free to create what I wanted to make. But, also, if I ever needed anything, I could go to Scooter or Pam and felt that there was some sort of a safety net there.”
“In my business, I have experienced all the sexism that one could probably experience, but it's probably equal to how devastating the ageism is,” Sheryl Crow revealed about one of the documentary’s themes. “I'm watching it with other artists who are my age really trying to keep their toe dipped into the youth thing. I mean, let's face it. Art has always been tethered to commerce but not like it is now. And it's all about a few people getting extremely rich and it rides on the backs of artists, particularly women, peddling this image of perfection and sexuality. And you can imagine how that feels. I turned 60 last week. I can remember entering 40 and feeling like, okay, wait a second, I've got my biological clock and I haven't had kids yet. All the artists that are on the radio right now that are females are under 20 — Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears. I'm getting ready to be 40. And it really does do a number on you. There's no way around it. To know that I'm writing my best work here in the last, I think, 15, 20 years. To know that it simply would not get played because of my age before it's ever even heard is demoralizing. But, that being said, I also feel like I have more things to write about now than ever. I feel liberated in my art because I'm not thinking about how to compete with the youngsters. I have embraced getting old. And that also, in some ways, is very liberating. But at the same time, I want it to feel heroic. I want women to know that you shouldn't be kicked over to the side of the road or be forced off the swing set just because your face isn't perfect and you don't have butt implants.”
One of the keys to Sheryl Crow’s longevity has not only been feel-good hits that continue to get radio airplay, but also a song she wrote for Pixar’s Cars, a franchise that has proven to be evergreen. “I knew there would be young kids that would know ‘Real Gone’ because it was in a Disney movie,” Crow said about discovering that she has a generational fan base. “As far as I knew, having two young boys unless I was doing a duet with Post Malone or Ariana Grande, I thought, well, I don't know how many kids are really going to know my music. It's been really fun and really exciting and extremely flattering to know that I'm played still in people's households or on their playlists when they're on a pontoon boat in the middle of a lake or whatever. And that's what you want. You know, I grew up listening to my mom and dad's music. Luckily, they were young. They were in their 20s when they had us and I listened to a lot of what was getting played then, which was R&B, which was Stax, which was music that was coming out of Memphis. My sister turned into a teenager, I got turned onto Joni Mitchell and to Fleetwood Mac and James Taylor and Carole King. So, I mean, that's what I hope still exists, is that we play music for our kids, that we're playing The Beatles, that we're playing the Stones, that we're playing stuff that has been a part of our lineage so that it becomes a part of the dictionary of references that they have.”
Director Amy Scott found Sheryl Crow to be full of surprises she wasn’t expecting when she joined the project. “I didn't realize that Sheryl was a musical genius, like, a classically trained, can sit down and play any instrument and write a song, conceive of it, have this beautiful, lyrical storytelling, do all the arrangements and then produce the record on top of that, because that's a whole other thing that's rare for a singular artist to do,” Amy explained. “This woman dreams big dreams, gets a little bit up the mountain but gets knocked down again, then climbs back up a little bit higher, gets knocked — like, this was not an easy road to the top… When you start to unpack the stories behind the songs — why they were written, what she was going through in her life — I was just blown away. And then, just on a personal side, Sheryl's really funny. She's so cool, but also she's got a great sense of humor and she's wildly talented. I should have known this because if you're really listening to her music, you can connect the dots very easily, but for some reason, it took me a long time to realize that there is this lineage of musical history to the past. And I could see how she has sort of navigated into this genre-less space, born out of time because of this intense reverence and connection with James Taylor, Stevie Nicks, Keith Richards. It's all very clear to me now. But, heading into the project, I wasn't aware of it at that point. So all of the discovery of who Sheryl is was just really magical for me.”
The discovery of who Sheryl Crow is can be magical for you, too, when the documentary film Sheryl premieres on Friday, May 6th at 9/8c on SHOWTIME.