Since her dense, varied, postmodernist eponymous second album illustrated that Sheryl Crow was no one-album wonder, she wasn't left with as much to prove the third time around. Having created an original variation on roots rock with Sheryl Crow, she was left with the dilemma of how to remain loyal to that sound without repeating herself on her third album, The Globe Sessions. To her credit, she never plays lazy, not when she's turning out Stonesy rockers ("There Goes the Neighborhood") or when she's covering Dylan (the remarkable "Mississippi," an outtake from Time Out of Mind). However, she has decided to abandon the layered, yard-sale production and pop culture fixations that made Sheryl Crow a defining album of the mid-'90s. The Globe Sessions, instead, is the work of a craftswoman, one who knows how to balance introspective songs with pop/rockers, one who knows how to exploit her signature sound while becoming slightly more eclectic.
The 2 CD companion piece to Sheryl Crow's forthcoming feature documentary, Sheryl, featuring 35 songs spanning 3 decades of music from the 9-time GRAMMY Award winner. 3 new songs are included with her hits "If It Makes You Happy," "Soak Up the Sun," "All I Wanna Do," "My Favorite Mistake," "Redemption Day," and many more! Sheryl Crow has sold more than 35 million albums worldwide.
Sheryl Crow was one of the key artists of the '90s, if the yardstick is capturing the sound and spirit of the time. A former backing vocalist for Michael Jackson – an association that led to dubious tabloid headlines romantically linking her with the singer long before she was a star in her own right – she rode the first great wave of Women in Rock hysteria of the alt-rock explosion to fame with her first album, Tuesday Night Music Club, in 1994, settling into the weary aftermath of the post-grunge years with her brilliant eponymous second album in 1996, riding out the end years of the Clinton administration with the measured, mature Globe Sessions in 1998, and then defying the gloom of the W years by soaking up the sun on 2002's C'mon C'mon.
Released for the British market, Hits and Rarities combines a good basic Sheryl Crow hits compilation with a collection of rarities that are either not that rare or interesting. The first disc is the stronger of the two, containing almost all of her big hits, not presented chronologically but presented entertainingly and not leaning too heavily on any particular era. Here, there are a few minor rarities…