Sheryl Crow on the Music Business Today: “Women Have to Step In and Say, ‘This Is Not Good Enough’”
The 1990s were in many ways a golden age for women in music. The Lilith Fair festival was a hot ticket, female-fronted and co-ed bands ruled at rock radio, and artists like Alanis Morissette, Fiona Apple, Sarah McLachlan, Shawn Colvin, and Jewel dominated the Grammys and VMAs.
And at the forefront of this movement was singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow, whose 1993 debut Tuesday Night Music Club earned her three Grammy Awards (including Best New Artist and Record of the Year for “All I Wanna Do”), and whose self-produced, self-titled sophomore effort nabbed another two Grammy trophies. Since then, Crow has soldiered on, releasing seven more albums and winning four more Grammys (she’s been nominated 32 times overall), but sadly, much has changed for Crow, her peers, and for female musicians in general since 1993. In many ways, it seems like the industry has regressed, and opportunities for women in music are fewer and farther between. What happened?
In a new sit-down interview with Katie Couric for Yahoo News, Crow mulls it over. “I am not sure what happened first, but I think the idea of branding really took over,” she says. “I think I was the first female to produce my own record, and shortly after that, Lauryn Hill came out, and both of us were nominated for a lot of Grammys. And at that moment, I think, women were stepping up and saying, ‘We’re artists. We’re not just pop stars. We’re not just entertainers.’ And then something happened along the way. I don’t know if it was the advent of social media… but it became more about our images, and dance routines, and sex — selling sex.
“This whole crop of women that I came up with were not about to sell sex,” Crow continues. “None of us were interested in doing that. Certainly Lauryn Hill wasn’t. Certainly Alanis Morissette wasn’t. That wasn’t the objective — to objectify ourselves to get our music played or out in front of people. And I think at that moment where not only were [women] objectifying ourselves, but we were being objectified in videos, that persona became bigger than the music. That became the brand. And unfortunately, that’s where we are.”
But Crow, who is currently working on two albums — an all-star collection, hopefully out before Christmas, featuring Stevie Wonder, Keith Richards, Stevie Nicks, Don Henley, and Kris Kristofferson, and a second release with longtime collaborator Jeff Trott — remains optimistic. “Hopefully it’s going to change, you know? We’ll see. But I think what has to change is women have to step in and say, ‘This is not good enough.’”
Watch Sheryl Crow’s full interview with Katie Couric here.
