Exclusive: Sheryl Crow Premieres ‘Front and Center’ Performance First on PopCulture.com

Sheryl Crow will appear on the popular TV series, Front and Center, on PBS Friday, Feb. 9. For the episode, the 55-year-old not only performs, but also shares her thoughts on her music, her longevity, and why this might be the best time of her life.

“Through the years of writing, I think I’ve learned that there’s nothing off-limits to write about, but at the same time, there is a responsibility,” says Crow. “I really love the fact that there are people that are still new to my music, and they listen to lyrics. Those are my people, and that the opportunity is there to share something. That’s what’s motivating to me.”

Crow acknowledges that she can trace the history of her life by listening to the honesty and vulnerability, in both lyrics and music, from all of her albums, dating back to her multi-platinum freshman Tuesday Night Music Club, released in 1994.

“I think my early work, when I listen to those records, which I don’t do very often, I hear all of my life experiences, going into those records,” Crow concedes.

“I hear the angst on the second record, that was really the response to the success of the first record, and people kind of nay-saying. I feel on the third record, the heartbreak I was going through, as a relationship was ending. On the fourth record, I feel like I can hear some real uncertainty about where I was going from that moment forward, as a 40-year-old, while my genre of music was gravitating to really young music, during the advent of really young pop stars. I hear all of the experiences on those records as being a record of what I was experiencing.”

Crow’s most recent project, appropriately called Be Myself, was released last year. The 11-track project was, in many ways, freeing for Crow, who decided to make her music, her way.

“This period of my life, I feel really liberated, and that’s maybe where the celebration comes in,” says Crow. “The fact that I’m not competing with young pop stars anymore – and I couldn’t even hope to get played at pop radio anymore, because it’s so geared to young people. But those aren’t necessarily the people that would gravitate to my music.”

Asked to narrow down her extensive list of recorded songs to one that best represents her musical journey, the Missouri native goes way back, to a song from her eponymous sophomore album.

“I would say ‘Every Day is a Winding Road’ was a marker for me, and for a number of reasons,” Crow notes. “It was the one song that I said, ‘It’s a throwaway,’ and my engineer at the time, Tchad Blake, who also worked on this last record, said ‘You have to put that on the record.’ There’s a line in the song, ‘Sometimes I feel like a stranger in my own life,’ that means more to me than the entire album. I put it on there because of that. And that I think is the testament to what it means to hit on something that feels universal.”

Other artists who have appeared on Front and Center include Miranda Lambert, Keith Urban, Cyndi Lauper, Darius Rucker, Little Big Town and more. Local listings can be found at FrontandCenter.com.