It’s easy to take Sheryl Crow for granted. Her string of hits provided the easy-listening soundtrack of the 1990s and 2000s, omnipresent in commercials, on the radio, and blasting over pool and waterpark speakers. Crow came to represent the good-time vibes of millennium-era pop rock, strumming a guitar in a cowboy hat while singing lines like “All I wanna do is have some fun” and “I’m gonna soak up the sun / I’m gonna tell everyone to lighten up.”
It’s also easy to forget Crow is more than a singer. She’s an actress, former teacher, cancer survivor, mother, and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee who has built a resoundingly successful career by walking the line between optimism and activism. Her catchy tunes swirl together social commentary, beachy cool, mainstream pop, and barroom blues. They tell stories about love, life, and longing, littered with details that place the characters within a larger social framework.
This remains true in Crow’s 13th album, Pick You Up. Even an eternal optimist like Crow is not immune to the turmoil rippling through her home country, and it clearly shapes her work, most expressly in “Flat Earth” and “Freedom Bus”. Her advocacy isn’t about spouting political jargon or tearing down the other side. Pick You Up instead revolves around a desperation to connect, to break through the walls that have popped up throughout America and its pop culture.
With only seven tracks, Pick You Up makes generous use of the LP format. Indeed, it was originally intended as an EP until the composition of the final track, “Freedom Bus”, but it’s fair to say that, at this point in her career, Crow can get away with a little brevity.
Remarkably, the decades have left the sweet smoothness of Crow’s voice untouched. What they have added is a gentleness, a slowness that was absent from her early records. The first two songs on Pick You Up are restrained as Crow meanders through her lyrics in a soft, hesitant fashion. It’s not until the third and title track that she returns to her full potential; “Pick You Up” comes closest to the rollicking, guitar-strumming Sheryl Crow of the past.
That’s not to say Crow isn’t making her voice heard. She has a knack for letting cultural commentary play a background role, falling naturally amid lyrics about her experiences and relationships. In under half an hour, Pick You Up speaks to the casualties of these divided times. In “Freight Train,” Crow sings through whisper-thin vocals about isolation, desolation, and separation, a trepidatious start before the album pivots into a plea for compassion and understanding.
Crow’s removal marks this shift as a central character. In contrast to her previous work, Pick You Up no longer revolves around the narrator’s “I”. Instead, each track heavily features a “you”, with lyrics centering on interactions and negotiation. Take “Perfect”, whose chorus includes a definitive pause between the lines “I wish I was perfect” and “In your eyes.” This trading of self-importance for self-awareness prioritizes compassion, a common theme throughout the album.
Pick You Up challenges listeners to find compromise where it seems impossible. Crow is exploring not just moral acuity, but also how differences are mediated. “Flat Earth” offers retreating and hiding as a valid response to calamity. Meanwhile, “Freedom Bus”, one of Crow’s most political songs to date, ends with a rather passive conclusion: “Let everyone be.”
The message is simple: meeting hatred with hatred makes progress impossible, and connections help us survive. As much as Pick You Up leaves the listener longing for more, its succinctness is part of its charm. Perhaps, by the time Sheryl Crow releases her next album, the world will be in a better position to resume soaking up the sun.