Detours Tracklist
Detours is the sixth studio album by Sheryl Crow, released on January 30, 2008, via A&M Records after a series of personal milestones for the singer. The album pulls inspiration from these experiences, such as her breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, the end of her engagement to cyclist Lance Armstrong, and the adoption of her first son, and combines them with her opinions on the state of the world, to create a socially conscious, politically-driven album.
Creating the album was a cathartic and important process for Crow, with her claiming it to be her most personal record, when asked:
It is. I think I went in, with a little baby just looking to me for all the answers. It certainly creates a sense of urgency to write about the things that are going on around me. It was, for me, just an idea of needing to get these songs out. Just needing to get them on paper and get them recorded, and not to be distracted. Because I think we’ve really mastered this posture of going to sleep and not being awake to what’s around us. That’s largely why we are where we are.
Aware that the subject matter of the album could attract criticism, Sheryl claimed she doesn’t care:
I just want people to hear it. I’m sure I’m going to get hit from a lot of different angles with the album being pointed and political and sardonic and caustic, but I don’t care. I want people to love it or hate it.
“Detours” Q&A
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How did Sheryl's newborn son influence the production and content of the album?
Sheryl said that “writing a record with a new baby, it just makes everything feel so much more urgent. I felt like I had my fist in the air, going I dare you to censor me, I dare you — like a crazy woman.”
With Wyatt being only 3 weeks old when Sheryl started working on the album, she has spoken numerous times about his impact on her during this time period:
Having this beautiful, innocent little spirit who’s looking to me for answers and comfort, compounded with everything else that was going on around me and around everyone else, all the chaos in the world — it just created this sense of urgency, and a real fearlessness.
This fearlessness caused her “lyrics [to] really just spill out; it was almost like a writing binge for me.”
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What was it like for Sheryl to work with Bill Bottrell again?
Sheryl had not worked with Bill since their falling out after her first album, which he also produced:
I had not worked with him since 1993. The two of us have gone on many detours in our lives that brought us back to this point. We always knew we had a great creative relationship, so it just felt like it was time to get back together. It was really like a homecoming for the two of us. It was a very creative and emotional and intense process. We recorded 24 songs over the course of about 40 days. Conceptually, I think the two of us agreed that the record had to be very raw, and [I was] committed to writing about what’s going on right now in the world and also what was happening with me personally.
When Sheryl called up Bill and asked him to work with her on the album, he said, “I’ve been waiting years for this call.”
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What does the title of the album mean?
The theme that runs throughout the album [are] these detours that take us away from how we thought our life was going to be. How we ultimately come back and investigate how to get back to who we really are. [It came] from having some major relationships and having breast cancer, trying to refine my life—not define it, but actually refine it. Also, where we are as a nation and the fact that we’ve gotten so far away from what America was founded on. Our reputation has been very damaged, and all this in the last seven years. How do we get back to who we are, what we stand for? So that’s the theme on the album. There are quite a few political songs and a lot of personal songs. It’s a very personal record.
— Sheryl Crow (2008)
