Detours – Sheryl Crow

Over the last 2 or 3 years, Sheryl was engaged to a man wearing tight-fitting lycra almost every day, she beat breast cancer, she voiced a character in animation hit movie Cars and she adopted a two-week old boy. Oh, and she released her weakest album to date “Wildflower.”

But somewhere during that 2 or 3 year period the seeds for this, her latest offering must have been planted and thank heavens for that… What a brilliant return to form for Sheryl and quite frankly, one of the few 2008 musical highlights so far. Even musical bible Rolling Stone agrees and featured Crow in their 21 February 2008 issue calling Detours “Crow's most powerful and most personal record yet."

First single “Love is Free” makes you want to rush out and buy an old beat-up VW Kombi and paint flowers on it, but ironically the song was inspired by the people of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Proof again that something destructive can lead to something uplifting. The next single is rumoured to be “Now that you’re gone,” a song echoing many a lost love’s biggest fear and hope at the same time as reflected in the lyrics “And I’m afraid some long lonely road will lead me back to you again.”

Detours is just one of those albums that puts te final nail in the coffin of artists who believe they can release an album off the back of maybe one or two strong songs. Every single song has something going for it, making it a stand-out track. From “Shine over Babylon,” a song Crow calls “very environmentally conscious, in the tradition of Bob Dylan," to “Peace be upon us,” possibly my favourite song on the album. Or maybe that honour should go to “Out of our Heads,” which cannot be described as a song really… it’s a brilliant musical plight to get into our hearts and resolve the issues of the world.