This double-album soundtrack functions like a greatest-hits set, with a focus on the singer-songwriter’s early material and some recent collaborations.
Toward the end of Sheryl, a new documentary that’s somewhere between a gentle hagiography and an electronic press kit, Sheryl Crow reckons with her status as a music business veteran: “There’s a weird thing that happens when you become a ‘legacy artist.’ It’s sort of a sideways compliment. It’s like, ‘OK, you’ve stood the test of time but also you’re old and you just haven’t gone away.’” The accompanying double-album soundtrack, Sheryl: Music From the Feature Documentary, proves Crow’s point by balancing the core of her catalog—the songs that have stood the test the time—with the music she’s made as a legacy artist who no longer visits the upper reaches of the Billboard Hot 100. Partly a greatest hits collection, partly a testimonial to Crow’s endurance, Sheryl: Music From the Feature Documentary leans heavily into the bookends of her career, emphasizing her 1990s hits along with Threads, the 2019 album she claims is her farewell.
Like the film, Sheryl places the spotlight squarely on the music she made at the outset of her career, which seemed like a throwback even in the 1990s. Raised on classic rock, Crow tapped into a distinctly 1970s vibe with her 1993 debut Tuesday Night Music Club, a record steeped in the slick, heady sounds of Southern California. Its retro vibe was roughly in the same ballpark as alternative rock, which happened to crash into the mainstream just prior to the album’s release. Crow courted the alternative rock audience just once: She smudged up her sound on her self-titled second album, which arrived during alt-rock’s commercial peak in 1996. The thick, churning guitars of “If It Makes You Happy” represented a definitive break from the effervescent sunniness of “All I Wanna Do,” signifying her artistic independence more than any desire to chase trends.
Sheryl doesn’t create a strong differentiation between the sunny vibes of Tuesday Night Music Club and the relatively grungier aspects of Sheryl Crow. The soundtrack deliberately alternates material from the two records, a sequence that emphasizes continuity over evolution: What stands out is how Crow managed to freshen classic rock conventions without repudiating their clichés. Her best work demonstrated a clear debt to idols like Fleetwood Mac and the Rolling Stones—both Stevie Nicks and Keith Richards return the favor by appearing in Sheryl— but she synthesized these elements into a distinctive voice that sounded weathered, soulful, and hopeful. She deepened this approach on 1998’s The Globe Sessions, then turned it into shiny pop for C’mon C’mon in 2002.
These four albums provide the backbone of both the documentary and its soundtrack. The first hour of the 90-minute film takes viewers up thorough C’Mon C’mon, while the soundtrack relies heavily on material from these records: Seven of the 11 songs on Tuesday Night Music Club are here, as are eight of the 13 cuts from Sheryl Crow, then four songs from The Globe Sessions and two from C’mon C’mon. The entire Sheryl project essentially glosses over the following two decades of Crow’s career, bypassing the handsome adult-alternative album Wildflower, the R&B genre exercise 100 Miles From Memphis, and Feels Like Home, her excursion into country music. While these records aren’t as bracing or idiosyncratic as her first four, they’re supporting evidence for Crow’s strength as a troubadour.
Instead of touching upon these albums, Sheryl concludes with a heavy dose of duets from Threads, the collaborative 2019 record Crow claims will be her final studio album, adding three new tracks that underscore her lifer status. “Forever” is a pretty ballad that hearkens back to delicate moments from Sheryl Crow, and “Still the Same” charts somewhat new territory for her, a stately romantic pop ballad with a heavy debt to Paul McCartney. She returns to her wheelhouse with a version of the Rolling Stones’ “Live With Me” that’s a bit too polished for its own good, its tight rhythms contrasting sharply with the looser feel of her first recordings. As a listening experience, the 35-song set feels somewhat anticlimactic. This isn’t a full portrait of Crow’s gifts as an artist, but it is a reminder of the high standard she set early on—music that retains its vitality, so much so that it can overshadow the perfectly enjoyable work that came later.
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